Pop superstar Shakira says she was attacked by pair of wild boars in Barcelona parkhttps://t.co/nl50YJ6hXb
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 30, 2021
Remember last summer’s “German nudist chases laptop-stealing wild boar“? Well…
Pop superstar Shakira says she was the victim of a random attack by a pair of wild boars while walking in a park in Barcelona with her eight-year-old son.
The Colombian singer said the animals attacked her, before seizing her bag and retreating with it into the woods.
She shared her bizarre tale in a series of Instagram stories on Wednesday.
Holding the now recovered but torn bag towards the camera, she said: “Look at how two wild boar which attacked me in the park have left my bag.”
“They were taking my bag to the woods with my mobile phone in it,” the singer continued. “They’ve destroyed everything.”
She then turned to her son, whose father is the Barcelona footballer Gerard Piqué, and said: “Milan tell the truth. Say how your mummy stood up to the wild boar.”
Shakira is the latest victim of the increasingly aggressive hogs which have invaded the Catalan capital in recent years.
In 2016, Spanish police received 1,187 phone calls about wild hogs attacking dogs, plundering cat-feeders, holding up traffic and running into cars in the city…
Well, at least it’s from a different Margaret Atwood novel…
craigie
Can people please stop naming their children after cities?
stinger
@craigie: I’m offended, and so are my three children, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, and Walla Walla.
HRA
@craigie: That is a popular name in Yugoslavian languages. I have relatives with the name Milan and even Milanka for a female.
Almost Retired
@stinger: It must have been a total nosebleed to go through the legal process of getting your middle child’s name changed from Leningrad.
craigie
Is Shakira Yugoslavian?
I rest my case.
Kropacetic
Feral hogs are coming for your children!
sab
When I was a little kid in central Florida they used to tell us horror stories about wild hogs, so I am impressed, and also glad she is okay. Did they eat her phone?
Chetan Murthy
Surely it was 30-50 Feral Hogs.
sab
@craigie: Almost everyone names their kids after cities, some of which were named after previous peoples’ kids.
stinger
@Almost Retired: ?
mrmoshpotato
@Kropacetic: Again?!
Major Major Major Major
Glad I’ve never had a run-in with a pig… worst thing we have here is millions of rats
craigie
@sab: It’s cities all the way down!
Mel
@craigie: Agreed, but since I have an ancestor named Constant Hussey, I can’t be throwing stones about name inspiration.
At least that’s what my daughter Schenectady and my son Blue Ball tell me…
Librarian
Hasn’t anyone here ever heard of the Czech writer Milan Kundera?
HRA
@craigie: I did not say she was Yugoslavian. I said there is the name Milan in Yugoslavia for a boy and Milanka for a girl.
Anya
@craigie: what about cities that are named after people? Can I call my future daughter Charlotte?
Comrade Colette
@craigie: City names are a damn sight better than Jayden, Jailen, Nevaeh, and all the other hideous made-up names that have been popular over the past couple of decades.
I’m still shaking my head over Trashelle.
ETA: I once met a woman named Latrina Leak, and google assures me she’s not the only one.
Chetan Murthy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_(given_name)
Mel
@Chetan Murthy: The thing that I love about this is the tattered handbag badge of glory. I’m sure that they found it discarded after the boars had fled the scene, but I like to think that she singlehandedly wrestled it back from the clutches of the (30 to 50!) feral hogs, because she has always been fierce and fabulous.
Chetan Murthy
Ugh, just wanted to say, the wikipedia entry for Milan is informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_(given_name)
used in Romance-speaking countries. Lots more info there.
sab
@sab: Did they eat her passport?
sab
@Anya: Savannah. Nancy. Georgia.
ETA: I know a Florida from the Phillipines.
Mel
@Comrade Colette: Thank goodness I’m not the only one who thought that naming to be an act of questionable parenting.
Chetan Murthy
@Mel: From what I understand, picking a name that really “stands out” is something parents did for some period of time, perhaps including the present-day. It certainly differs from picking the favorite name going around (e.g. “AshleyMadison”, etc). Myself, if I were to end up a parent (which is, at this point, pretty much nagahapen), I’d go with the traditional “pick the given name of an appropriately-sexed forebear from one of the two family trees”.
I mean, how hard can that be?
Almost Retired
My paternal grandfather was born in Hampton, Iowa. And his name was Hampton Iowa (Surname). My Great-Grandparents clearly didn’t want to bother with agonizing over baby names. My Great Aunt is lucky she wasn’t named Second Child. A couple of times over the years Grandpa H.I. got a shout out in the Des Moines Register when they were doing an article about unusual names.
Dan B
@sab: Akron of Agamemnon? Walla Walla Ingeborgsdottir? This could be more interesting than 23 and me.
barbequebob
Have nothing to say about cities, but as a wildlife biologist my pet peeve is what is meant by the term “pair”? We typically use that term to denote a male-female breeding pair. In our vernacular, two individuals of the same species, in the same place, at the same time, especially outside of mating and nesting season, is not necessarily a “pair”.
Two birds of a feather (or boars) does not necessarily constitute a “pair”.
AxelFoley
Whoa, now. My niece is named Neveah. Grrrr.
sab
@barbequebob: Are we sure they were both boars? Who notices gender when they are attacking your kid and your purse?
Chetan Murthy
@sab: Apparently the female is called a “gilt” until she bears young, and then a “sow”.
sab
@Dan B: My dad’s middle name, although a family name, is also a medieval/ renaissance word for a woman’s platform/overshoe for bad weather. Patten.
Dan B
@sab: My father’s middle name was Davenport, a family name. He endured years of “Sophie”. There was a small road on one of the state highways over the Cascades named Sophie Road. He said nothing whenever I pointed it out. Aaagh youth!
trollhattan
@Comrade Colette:
Trashelle, if it isn’t already, shall become the most popular singlewide name of all. “Hello, parents to be, can we talk?”
Mel
@Chetan Murthy: Every year, I’d have at least 10 children in my class with names that you just knew were going to cause those kids trauma throughout their lives.
Sometimes it seemed like intentional assholery on the part of the parents (“Rusty Toole” and “Peter Dick”, etc.), but sometimes it seemed to be an unintended but tragic misspelling (“Chasititty” instead of “Chastity” is one that comes to mind, as does the spectacularly unfortunately named first grader “Vaginia” – WOW, I still shudder to think of what fresh hell junior high homeroom roll calls would bring for that child).
I hereby endorse your proposed naming strategy!
Chetan Murthy
@Mel: And then there’s the unfortunate Irish name “Micheál” which when Anglicized …. *sigh*.
Chetan Murthy
@Mel: There’s at least one Indian name that, when Anglicized, is …. ugh. just ugh. One Anglicization is “Dixit”. I’m sure you can guess others. I have read of at least one instance where an immigrant had the bad luck of meeting a CBP agent who …. wasn’t very kind, and performed the Anglicization for the poor fellow, and …. well, it wasn’t very fun for him (until, I presume, he found out and had it corrected).
Comrade Colette
@trollhattan: People may choose to live in a singlewide, or they may not have a choice, but nobody has to name their kid after literal garbage.
I’ve seen some unusual names created from splicing or smushing the parents’ or grandparents’ names, so maybe her father was Travis and her mother was Michelle … nah, overthinking it.
sab
@Dan B: Davenport sounds highfallutin. Didn’t Doonesbury have one, first name Lacey?
Amir Khalid
@craigie:
It could be worse. There is an actual person named Paris Hilton.
sab
@Comrade Colette: I lived for a while in a singlewide. I loved it. Windows all around, plus wheels underneath and a trailer hitch to move on..
Doublewides were creepy. Low ceilings. Dark. Just claustrophobic.
Almost Retired
@Mel: My wife is in education and every year there’s at least one or two kids who have a name that sounds like someone Bart Simpson would try to have paged at Moe’s.
Comrade Colette
@Amir Khalid: I refuse to believe that.
Mel
@Chetan Murthy: Before I was born, my brother (age 5) engaged in a battle of wills with my parents, insisting that he should get to name me, and that I should be named “Judy”.
He finally wore them down, and I was going to be Judy right up to the moment when he announced why: “I’m naming my baby sister Judy so she’ll do neat tricks and be my pet just like Judy on ‘Lost in Space’!”
Yep. Not named after a sci-fi space pet, thank goodness.
sab
@Chetan Murthy: My first husband’s last name was Pesis, and his middle school friends called him “peen”, to which his mother always said ” Oh, my.” She was a very slyly cool person. Slid under the men’s radar completely. I loved her.
lgerard
Evidently her name is pronounced “Tru-shell”
I’m sure she has to spend quite bit of time correcting people on that point
Amir Khalid
@Comrade Colette:
Would I lie to you?
sab
@Chetan Murthy: My family adopterd an utterly new, not family name for me. Susan. There were three or four Susan’s in every class in elementary school. Now nobody has it. I have to spell it to people. I prefer that to it being the most polular name in the class.
Dan B
@sab: It was “highfaluten”. Didn’t stop the torment. Even his twin sisters teased him. There were wealthy people, friends, and associates. I grew up with the vision of a path to being a successful influencer with a professional career of note. When I was shunned by my previously laudatory professors shunned me it was a great shock. I believe I have PTSD from that.
Chetan Murthy
@sab: wait, wut? You have to spell “Susan” ? In the USA ? That that that …. have you checked levels of lead in the water? Maybe everybody around you is suffering from brain damage? That’s just about the easiest name to spell that there is. Uh, ok, after Jack and Jill, I guess.
Mel
@Chetan Murthy: On my mom’s side of the family, there are some beautiful names. I would have loved to be “Ekaterina” or “Aziza”. The one I’m thankful not to be is the Anglicized version of “Deldedi”- which was apparently misspelled on 1800s immigration papers as “Dildodi”.
Nooooo, thank you very much!
(Also, a hearty no to two from my Dad’s side: the aforementioned Constant Hussey, and ANY of the names that end in “de Cockermouthe”…)
The rest are pretty sane, but now that I think about it, Dildo Hussey de Cockermouthe might be the world’s best burlesque name.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mel:
When my cousins were expecting their second child, they asked their daughter (then around three or four) what they should name the new baby. Without missing a beat, she replied: “Hasbro.”
Dan B
@Mel: Disagree. This would not be believed as a genuine name. But it would be a great stage name.
Anne Laurie
@Comrade Colette: My parents named me after an obsolete pop song, and my mother changed the spelling, on purpose. I can only sympathize with fellow sufferers.
Actually, Annie Laurie is no longer popular enough (outside of Japan, for reasons) that random people think they need to sing it at me when we’re introduced. But getting *both* halves of my first name spelled correctly will never *not* be a chore!
Mel
@SiubhanDuinne: We worry a bit about the names of my little niece’s future children, should she have any.
Her favorite doll is named “Elbow”, and her favorite stuffed toy is called “Gorg”.
Mel
@Dan B: Of course stage name.
Lacuna Synecdoche
BBC via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Is that better or worse than going to a Republican event and being attacked by a wild boor?
SiubhanDuinne
@Mel:
And with that, we come full circle back to place names. There’s a town in Saskatchewan called “Elbow” (not to be confused with another Saskatchewan town, “Eyebrow”).
Mel
@SiubhanDuinne: A horrifyingly perfect roundabout!
Comrade Colette
@SiubhanDuinne:
Do folks have trouble telling it apart from the town of “Ass” just down the road? Or only the ones who aren’t from around there?
Tony Jay
@Mel:
That’s good, but there was a former Manager of Blair House (I think that’s right) called Randy Bumgardener.
I’m not sure if the full awesomeness of that name comes across in American English, but us Brits fall about laughing.
I suppose the A-E version would be Horny Buttgardener
ETA – FYI, ‘Cockermouth’ is a town on the west coast of Cumbria in the north of England, close to the Lake District. It’s got a famous brewery and will be washed away soon enough by the frequent climate change induced flooding that turns its main high-street into a roaring river.
Mel
@Tony Jay: Wow. The only thing worse might be if Randy Bumgardner married Vaginia. And served spotted dick at the rehearsal dinner?
Mel
@Mel: There’s a clutch of long-ago ancestors on Dad’s side that were Fletchers of Cockermouthe. Lots of folks from all around the Lake District on that side of the tree.
Mel
Oops! Above comment meant as reply to Tony Jay.
bjacques
Don’t you all be casting aspersions on my lovely children Anaheim, Azusa, and…
.
.
Cucamonga
Mel
@bjacques:
Cucamonga for the win!
Tony Jay
@Mel:
I think I saw that movie, well, ten minutes of it. 8-()
Steeplejack
@Chetan Murthy:
If you can overcome your excess of modesty, can you tell us how “Micheál” is Anglicized? (Wikpedia is no help.) And what is the name that gets Anglicized as “Dixit”? Thanks in advance.
NotMax
@bjacques
Jack Benny references never go out of style.
;)
Ascap_scab
@Kropacetic:
Next up on FOX, Biden’s Boar Crisis: Failing to protect our children from immigrant Muslim boars teaching Critical Boar Theory and voting in our elections.
Kalakal
@craigie: As a proud Yorkshireman I’d like to introduce my kids, Liversedge and Cleckheaton and their workshy cousin, Idle
J R in WV
There was a well known and rich doctor and politician in SE West Virginia with the last name of Hogg.
He was cruel enough to name his two daughters Ima and Eura. Yes, Ima Hogg and Eura Hogg. Must have been Republican, am I right?
Just Chuck
Geez the ribs on Shakira. Girl, eat a sammich!
Kosh III
I once met a woman, she was, shall we say, very stout. Her name was Rotunda.
Kosh III
Wild boars are a major problem in Tennessee, especially in the mountains. The Wildlife Agency lets anyone kill as many as they can but it doesn’t diminish the numbers.
Every time I hike in the North Cumberland mountains here, which is often, I am aware of them and often see traces of where they were rooting. Happily I have never encountered them.
LeftCoastYankee
Free range Jamon, now with more cell phone….
Kosh III
I can top everyone in the bizarre name category
I had a 2nd cousin, about 25 years older than me, didn’t know him well as he was from the poor white trash branch of the family :)
Timberline Hall.