Swimming pool drowning deaths in the US

It is a remarkable and largely underappreciated fact that as feral hogs have spread across the American landscape with the quiet determination of a species that knows exactly what it wants, fewer Americans have been drowning in swimming pools. The correlation is negative, nearly perfect, and entirely unexplainable by any mechanism that does not involve hogs physically patrolling suburban backyards. One imagines them standing at the pool gate, hooves crossed, shaking their heads slowly at unsupervised toddlers.

The likely explanation involves neither porcine heroism nor aquatic intervention, but rather the steady march of two unrelated trends across the same eight-year window. Feral hog populations have been expanding into new states since the early 2000s, driven by habitat changes, illegal transport for hunting, and a reproductive rate that would make rabbits envious—a single sow can produce up to two litters of six piglets per year. Meanwhile, swimming pool drowning deaths have been declining thanks to better pool fencing regulations, increased CPR training, and a general cultural shift toward helicopter parenting that would have seemed pathological in 1985. Between 2006 and 2020, these two entirely separate phenomena happened to move in opposite directions with the kind of statistical precision that makes you want to check the math twice.

What we have here is a universe that is perfectly willing to let two unrelated phenomena dance in opposite directions for eight years running, just to see if anyone notices and draws a conclusion. Someone always does. The hogs, for their part, remain unaware of their apparent contribution to water safety, which is probably for the best.