Runaway pigs (photo from Facebook)
Who let the pigs out?
This morning a neighbor posted on the Facebook page of the Lochwood Meadows Neighborhood & Dixon Branch Homeowners Association (it’s a private page, so you have to be accepted to see the posts) that two pigs were running around the Lochwood neighborhood at Sunland and Northwest Highway.
She shared two pictures of a black pig and a spotted pig rooting around a front yard on the corner.
The street crossing where the pigs were first spotted (photo by Brittany Nunn)
It reminded me of the time 2-year-old, pot-bellied pig Eleanor Pigby escaped from her backyard and had a similar adventure in the neighborhood, so naturally I did what any reporter would do — I followed the money bacon.
By the time I showed up at the house in the picture, the pigs were gone. The neighbor who lives in said house, Ryan Stoudt, said he didn’t see them either. He said his wife saw the post on Facebook, but by the time they went outside the porksters had already high-tailed it.
A couple blocks away two men were carving up wood in the front yard of a house on Sunland. When asked if they had seen the pigs, they said they saw the same pair running around the neighborhood about a week ago.
About that time another man came out of the house, neighbor Vaghn Hoffman, and he said he saw the pigs this morning. They belong to a nearby neighbor, and it wasn’t the first morning he’d seen them running around. His daughter, who wasn’t there at the time because she’d just delivered a baby the day before, lives in the back house that shares an alleyway with the house where the two little pigs live (phew, that’s a mouthful).
A view of the alley where the pigs sometimes roam in the morning (photo by Brittany Nunn)
“She knows where they live, but nobody ever seems to be there,” he explains. “[The pigs] get out and root around in the morning. Then they run back under the fence.”
From the porch of the back house, we were able to see the backyard of the neighbor who supposedly owns the hogs. We couldn’t tell if the pigs were in the backyard or not.
His wife, Ruth Hoffman, also saw the pigs this morning.
“We try to round them up. They get out from underneath that fence,” she says, pointing to the backyard catty-corner to their own backyard. “They usually just hang out in the alley. I hadn’t seen them go anywhere far.”
Even when I drove past the backyard, I couldn’t tell if the pigs had gone wee-wee-wee all the way home, or if they were still roaming the neighborhood. The front of the house sits at the end of a cul-de-sac on Carissa. When I knocked on the front door, no one answered.
The backyard where the pigs allegedly live (photo by Brittany Nunn)
A neighbor a couple houses down the street, Helen Michakes, says she also saw the pigs this morning.
“I think the neighbors are out of town,” she explains. “I saw the pigs running around yesterday, too. I haven’t seen the neighbors’ truck in about a week. They shouldn’t go out of town and leave the pigs there. They get out and run all over the damn neighborhood.”
She’d seen the pigs hanging out in the front yard earlier, but by then they were nowhere to be seen. Despite her frustration with the neighbors, whose names she couldn’t recall, Michakes hopes the pigs are safe.
“I hope someone finds the pigs. They’re cute and all that,” she says. “I hate to see them get killed. Someone is going to be eating pork chops if they keep getting out like that.”
Pig sighting? Comment below if you’ve seen the porky pair.
