> The animals thrived on the swampy peninsula, gorging themselves on a root called tuckahoe that, as one historian wrote, “burns the mouth of a human being like fire.”

I'm always curious about native foods so I looked this up. The plant is probably Peltandra virginica, which was supposedly eaten by indigenous people.

> The plant is rich in calcium oxylate, this is toxic and if consumed makes the mouth and digestive tract feel as though hundreds of tiny needles are being stuck into it. However, calcium oxylate is easily destroyed by thoroughly cooking or drying the plant https://practicalplants.org/wiki/Peltandra_virginica

I assume they mean calcium oxalate, which is also present in many food crops that must be cooked (e.g. taro root and the fruit of the peach palm).

There's a reason we all don't all raise hogs now.

A lot of my family in the Philippines have pigs in their back yard. It's not a set-and-forget affair. You like cleaning up kitty litter? Times the cleanup job by about a million, with a hose, and gumboots.

Ughh...

I exited after 15s of watching the embedded, auto-loading video at the top of the article. Around then, I realized this video was irrelevant.

What an awful website. Auto-play videos, numerous pop-ups. Ick.

Everyone used to be at risk of trichinosis as well, from feeding their hogs shit and garbage.