peach -orchard boar

[Joan H. Hall]

DARE has an entry for peach-orchard boar:

[1885 Century Illustr. Mag. 29.681 cTN, An' don't stan' ther' a-gawpin'
like er runt pig in er peach orchard.]
[1953 Randolph-Wilson Down in Holler 108 Ozarks, A candidate for
Congress once said that his opponent, a handsome fellow and popular with
the ladies, was "wild as a boar in a peach orchard."]
1967 DARE Tape WA30, [FW:] Can you tell me how hungry you were before
you started eating? [Inf:] You mean tonight? Hungrier than a peach
orchard boar.
1986 DARE File, Crazier than a peach orchard boar.
1992 Houston Chron. (TX) 5 Apr sec G 1, Crazy: . . Nuttier than a peach
orchard pig.
1995 Brophy Coll. 54 swMO (as of c1960), Peach-orchard borer [sic],
crazy as a.
1997 NADS Letters nFL, I have heard this from my native North Floridian
in-laws as "peach orchard boar." The idea is that wild hogs ate the
peaches whole, and became agitated when they passed the pits. Thus one
can be "wilder than a peach orchard boar."
1998 Ibid TX, I have . . heard the phrase "peach orchard boar" all my
life from mostly rural folks in West Texas, East Texas, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Florida. It is a widespread and
commonly used phrase always used as "drunk as a peach orchard boar" or
"crazy as a . . " or "wild as a . .". This phrase comes from the fact
that if hogs eat the rotting, fermenting fruit that has fallen to the
ground . . they actually get drunk, stagger around, fall down, and run
into things.
Ibid, I . . often heard from my mother-in-law "crazy (or wild) as a
peach-orchard boar." She explained that it was from the fact that pigs
foraged among the fermented fallen fruit in peach orchards and got drunk
and disorderly.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org