Detroit Neighborhood Befriends Stray Porch Pig as Partner Evades Animal Control

What happened

According to a report from UPI, residents in a Detroit neighborhood spent several days hosting an unusual pair of four-legged visitors after two loose pigs took up residence along Hendricks Street. Neighbors reported that the two swine, identified as a male and a female, first appeared in the area on Monday and showed no hesitation about approaching people.

Local resident Johnnie Beals told television station WDIV-TV that neighbors began recording video when the pigs walked right up to them, allowing bystanders to pet and scratch them. Shortly after the initial arrival, neighborhood residents temporarily managed to capture the female pig, but they subsequently decided to let her go. Another neighbor, Christopher Lompra, explained that he took to feeding the male pig each morning, noting that the animal would regularly walk directly up to his front porch steps to greet him.

Detroit Animal Care and Control officers were dispatched to the neighborhood on Wednesday to round up the roaming livestock. Officials spent more than an hour pursuing the elusive male pig through residential yards before successfully cornering the animal inside a bush. Animal control personnel stated that the captured pig will be relocated to a rescue, sanctuary, or farm, while the female pig remains unaccounted for.

Dale Kowalski weighs in

In twenty-two years of local television news, I covered three separate runaway emus, a heifer that walked into a laundromat in Bay City, and an entire trailer of feeder pigs that overturned on the westbound ramp of Interstate 96 during the morning commute. Livestock on pavement is a Midwestern tradition. Nobody plans for it. It just arrives on a Monday morning like bad weather or an assessment notice from the county.

The pigs on Hendricks Street in Detroit did not cause a major interstate pileup. They simply showed up on a residential block, walked up to the neighbors, and allowed themselves to be petted. Johnnie Beals pulled out his phone and took video. That is what people do now when a pair of farm animals appears on their sidewalk. Twenty years ago, someone would have called a cousin who owned a pickup truck. Today we film the pig, we upload the footage, and we scratch the pig behind the ears.

Then came the decision that tells you everything you need to know about human nature. According to the reporting, the residents actually caught the female pig. They had her in hand. And then, after a brief period of reflection, they let her go. I admire that. It is the purest possible expression of municipal fatigue. You corral a strange pig in your driveway, you stand there looking at eighty pounds of grunting responsibility, and you realize that keeping a pig is a lot more work than letting a pig remain someone else’s problem. So you open your hands and let her stroll back down the block.

Meanwhile, Christopher Lompra took the opposite approach. He started making breakfast for the male. Every morning the pig would trot up to his front steps, look at him, and say oink, oink, oink. Lompra put out food. If you feed a stray animal on your porch for three consecutive days in Wayne County, that animal is legally your tenant. They had an arrangement. It was quiet. It worked.

The arrangement ended on Wednesday when Detroit Animal Care and Control showed up. The ensuing foot pursuit lasted over an hour. That sounds about right. An hour is the standard duration for city employees in heavy boots trying to outmaneuver an animal whose center of gravity is four inches off the asphalt. The officers finally trapped him in a bush, which is where every Midwestern chase eventually concludes, usually right around the time everyone involved has run out of breath and dignity.

The male is going to a sanctuary or a farm, where he will likely spend the rest of his life eating grain and wondering why nobody in the country leaves breakfast on the porch steps. The female pig is still out there somewhere in Detroit. She saw what happened to her partner, assessed the local municipal resources, and decided to maintain a low profile. You have to respect that.

That’s the news. Somebody had to say it.