Eight little piggies cried “wee, wee, wee” all the way home — back to their Kodiak farm in Bell’s Flat. But not without first generating some excitement on the Friends of Kodiak Facebook page.
Footage of eight black-and-brown piglets trotting down Salmon Berry Drive (at first glance they looked like an unharnessed dog team) had people asking, “Who do those little piggies belong to? And from whence did they make their escape?”
The video gave rise to all kinds of speculation. Were they training for the Idita-hog? Were they being hunted? Or were they just having the times of their lives?
Brittany Keplinger quickly put an end to the guessing game when she posted, “Pig situation is under control. Thank you everyone.”
Keplinger said she got several calls at the Rendezvous restaurant, where she works, saying her pigs were on the run. But by that time, her husband Jacob was close to ending the adventure.
“They’ve never traveled that far,” Keplinger said, “so they were a little out of sorts when they saw a car for the first time and probably a dog or two.”
The 12-month-old piglets are Kodiak born and bred, the offspring of a local sow and boar. As it turns out, Jacob didn’t have much trouble luring them home. He knows what it takes to get a pig’s attention.
“He gives them marshmallows every morning so that they come up close to him,” Keplinger said.
And the old marshmallow tricked worked. Jacob and a friend were able to corral the escapees into a pen.
But how is it that the eight little piggies broke out in the first place? Normally, they’re penned in with an electric fence. But they’ve learned that if they dig and pile enough dirt up against it, they can knock it out of commission.
“They can smell when the electric fence is hot and on, so if they can smell and realize it’s down, because they’ve piled so much dirt on it, they know that they can just run through the netting,” Keplinger said.
Young though these piggies may be, you might say they’re still on the run — from someone’s future dinner plate. Friends and neighbors have already placed deposits to buy them when they’re fully grown.
