Pop star Shakira was recently the victim of a terrible mugging in Barçelona, and terrifyingly, the suspects are still at large. Because they are wild boars.
Yes, for real: Several European cities are having ever increasing problems with marauding bands of feral pigs running roughshod through the cityscape, and one of those bands chose Shakira as its victim.
The star detailed the situation in her Instagram stories, showing off the damage to her bag that occurred while she was in a park with her son.
See the video below.
Don't these boars know who she is?
These boars better lock down their social media accounts because Shakira Stan Twitter will not stand for this!
In her video, Shakira, who lives in Barçelona with her partner, Barçelona soccer player Gerard Piqué, said that the boars tried to attack her while she was in the park with her son, then ripped her bag from her hands and ran off into the woods.
As she said in the video, according to a BBC translation:
"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. They've destroyed everything!"
Shakira was somehow able to get her bag back.
It sounds like it might have been quite the showdown, judging from what she asked her and Piqué's son Milan to say to the camera:
"Milan, tell the truth. Say how your mommy stood up to the wild boar."
This may all sound absurd, but wild boar attacks have become a major problem in a few European cities in recent years.
They can survive in basically any environment—and increasingly that environment includes large cities, where there is plenty of garbage for them to feast on.
Their population has exploded in Barçelona in recent years—the city's police received nearly 1,200 calls in 2016 to report boars doing everything from attacking dogs to running into cars. And last year in Rome, police caused an uproar after they shot a family of boars that had made their way into a playground.
Despite the realities of the problem, you must admit that "boar steals Shakira's purse" has more than a whiff of absurdity to it, and naturally Twitter had an absolute field day.
Several European cities have adopted ever more drastic efforts towards curbing the porcine menace—like Berlin's scheme of allowing people to hunt them in the major metropolitan area—all to no avail.
It may be time to simply welcome our new wild boar overlords.
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