In the age-old Mother Goose rhyme, the little pigs went to the market, but this time, the little pigs went to Chula Vista.
Over the weekend, more than a dozen pigs suddenly appeared in a South Bay neighborhood with no place to go.
But they didn’t seem to mind being lost too much.
“Where I pulled into the driveway, pigs were actually sleeping in a big pile,” said Supervising Animal Control Officer Talia Padilla.
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It was a deceptively simple mission at first: Just use some food to lure them into the trailer. This worked for most of the pigs.
“That did leave behind one of the pot bellies and one of the piglets,” Padilla said. “They're fast, they're squirrely, and they can find a weakness in any type of gap that you make.”
Three hours later, rescuers gathered them to rest at San Diego County’s Department of Animal Services, before getting a call that there were two more.
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With the herd all together, their personalities came out. The mom loves her ears scratched.
“She would just start to fall asleep,” Padilla said. “I’m scratching her ears, and she'd start to try to make room to fall asleep. She's a big girl, so she was trying to move her piglets out of the way so she could lay down and go to sleep.”
The pigs will stay at the Bonita Animal Services location through the rest of the week to see if someone comes forward to claim them. If not, they can be put up for adoption.
Animal Services isn’t sure how the pigs got lost or if someone abandoned them … but they want to remind everyone that pigs and pets can be escape artists.
If you have pets on your property, do monthly checks to make sure there aren’t any gaps they can squeeze through.
