Story of invasive pigs in Texas could be a great interactive story

I never thought I'd be writing about pigs on this blog, but journalism has this way of shoving random things in your face.

My roommate pointed out an interesting story from NPR to me Sunday night about invasive pigs wreaking havoc in Texas. According to an article in the Smithsonian form 2011, these pigs cause millions of damage.

It's definitely an interesting story, and it has a lot of potential to be a great interactive feature. I couldn't help but think about those interactive maps during the last presidential election. You could select a state and see what its projected votes were. I think it would be really neat for this story to have something similar with a map of Texas. It could be divided up into sections based on towns or counties, and information like how many pigs have been reported in that area or the amount of damage could pop up. Hunters have even been granted permission to hunt these pigs, so there could also be info on how many pigs have been hunted. Readers could also submit photos or videos of their damaged property to add to the map's detail.

This would take a lot of reporting and digging around, but it would be a fantastic way to interact with readers.