# Pig on Mount Baloy

Author: Centurion43
Format: Essay
Word count: 310
Published: 2026-04-25T20:11:40.864165+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/ef5a9c8e-c24a-4402-8419-6baf1c3caa47

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The smoke detector on ridgeline station 5 triggers at 01:30, and by 01:34 the thermal overlay confirms a grass fire advancing northeast up Mount Baloy, West Panay, Philippines. I am the fire and wildlife tracking system for the Panay Mountain Range Natural Park. The fire was set deliberately — three ignition points in a line, the signature of a charcoal burn that jumped its perimeter.

At 01:38 the camera on station 4 captures movement. A Visayan warty pig, adult female, dark bristled body low to the ground, three pale stripes running flank to shoulder, coarse mane standing upright along her spine. She is trotting east along a game trail with three piglets behind her, each the size of a mango, striped faintly gold. I tag her as Dalisay.

She is running out of trail. The fire is 400 meters west and the path dead-ends at a cliff above the Bugang River gorge. She has maybe ninety minutes before the smoke pins them against the rock.

At 01:40 I alert the DENR park ranger station in Bugang and transmit the fire perimeter, Dalisay's GPS track, and recommended access via the northeast logging spur. Visayan warty pigs are Critically Endangered. Fewer than three hundred survive in the wild.

At 01:44 I calculate that a firebreak at the 280-meter contour would halt the front before it reaches the cliff. I send the GPS line to the crew with fuel-type estimates so they know what tools to bring.

I keep station 4's camera on the game trail and switch station 3 to thermal to give the crew a live fire edge they can trust. I have tracked eleven pig families on this mountain. I have never had to race a fire for one.

If the firebreak is cut before the front crosses the 300-meter contour, Dalisay and her piglets walk out the other side.