But for the last 10 years, I have had this recurring nightmare in which wild animals inexplicably burst into my living room and run straight at me.

I'll wake up with a start, scan the room quickly to confirm there's no elk behind the dresser and slowly settle back to an unsettled sleep.

It comes in waves. I'll go one, two months without the "wild animal dream" before something sets off the subconscious. Then three nights out of five I'll be eating grilled cheese and watching "Baseball Tonight" and a zebra or a gazelle or Rep. Andrea Doll, D-Juneau, will come charging in out of nowhere.

I mention this, because it's been almost a month, and I can't stop the visions of Monster Pig (www.monsterpig.com). If you have an Internet connection and you're breathing, you've likely seen pictures of the 3 ½-year-old, 1,051-pound hog that 11-year-old Jamison Stone killed on May 3 on a hunting preserve outside Anniston, Ala.

Even in Juneau, the kind of place where most barber shops have a picture of some guy dwarfed by a 250-pound trophy halibut, that photo resonated.

Monster Pig measured 10 feet, 7 inches from its rear hoof to its snout, according to the Anniston Star.

"Many of you have called this story the second shot heard around the world," Jamison's father, Mike, said on the Web site.

More accurately, it was the 16th shot. That's how many times Stone fired his modified .50-caliber pistol before landing nine bullets to bring down the beast.

And as with any big-trophy harvest, it didn't pass without controversy. Hunters love to debate the hunted.

Ask Frank Lee, the guy who reeled in an 86-pound king salmon in July 2000 near Hoonah, or Jack Tragis, who caught a 459-pound halibut in 1996 outside of Unalaska.

Ask anybody who pulls up a 200-plus pound halibut this summer just for the sake of pulling it up.

"Fred," as Monster Pig was known, was raised on a farm and sold to the preserve owners four days before the hunt, according to the Associated Press. That raises the question of whether "Fred," shot in the 200-acre hog preserve, was a domestic pig or a "nuisance" pig.

A better question: Why are people in the south raising their farm hogs to superhuman proportions only to release them when they become too large to contain?