Strawberry, a Duroc-Yorkshire gilt hog owned by Bob Shumaker, gave birth to her first litter early Sunday morning. It took her about five hours to deliver the piglets, which weigh about 3 to 4 pounds apiece.
Only a few hours later, about noon, Alaska State Fair herdsman Rita Bequette heard shouting.
 ROBERT DeBERRY/Frontiersman Eleven new piglets lay nestled and feeding Monday in their pen at the Farm Exhibits barn at the 2008 Alaska State Fair. The pint-sized porkers were born Sunday. By Monday noon, they'€™d suffered two attempts at pignapping. |
Before she could get to the pen, she heard someone shouting, “He’s taken one. He’s taken one.”
Bequette said people were pointing toward the main door of the barn, which leads onto the crowded paths near Raven Hall. “I was fighting through the crowds to get there,” Bequette said. Before she could reach the door, someone else had saved the piglet.
“I saw a girl coming back toward me with the pig in her hands,” Bequette said.
The man who had stolen the $100 pig, who Bequette described as in his late 30s or early 40s, was swallowed up in the crowd and disappeared. Bequette took the pig from the unidentified young woman and returned the baby to its mother and 10 siblings.
“It’s the first time we’ve had a newborn walk out,” Bequette said. “What he intended to do with it, I can’t even fathom.”
But even as Bequette was describing the incident, she learned there had been another attempted piglet napping Monday morning, despite a round-the-clock sentry on the baby porkers.
About 10:30 a.m. on Labor Day, Mat Valley 4-H Club member Jacob Gavulic, 17, was on volunteer guard duty, perched above the enclosure near Goat Mountain where Strawberry and her piglets were housed, when he noticed the baby pigs, who spend most of their time sleeping, were moving. Gavulic realized someone had his hand in the enclosure, moving the piglets. Gavulic asked him to take his hand out of the pen.
“He put his hand around a pig and was pulling it through the bars,” Gavulic said. “I told him, ‘Take your hand away or I’ll take it away for you. You really need to let go of that pig.’”
The man may have recognized the resolve in the voice of a Wasilla High School football player who hasn’t let a broken bone in his leg slow him down. He let go of the pig and hurried away.
The incidents dismay Bequette but don’t surprise her. She said each day people hide chicks under their coats and take them out of the barn. Sometimes security staff sees the pilfered poultry and return them to the Triple D display in the barn. Rabbits and other small animals go missing each year, too.
The barn staff and the 4-Hers have to keep an increasingly watchful eye on the livestock.
“It’s sad it has to be that way,” Gavulic said.
As for Strawberry and the piglets, they were together Monday afternoon, content for the last few hours of the fair.
The piglets have been named Penelope, Leo, Ginger, Hemi, Carmel Chocolate, Owen, Nemo, Chip, Britches, JubJub and Chloe. There was no word which of the little porklets were nearly purloined.
With their Duroc-Yorkshire mother and their Berkshire father, the little ones are a colorful mix of white, black spots, brown and Hampshire stripe. They could have a litter of half-siblings at any moment. Shumaker artificially inseminated Strawberry and an older sow on the same day, but the sow had not delivered as of 3:30 p.m. Monday.
Comments
4 comment(s)destinylove wrote on Sep 4, 2008 4:00 PM:
THEN PEOPLE CANT FIGURE OUT WHY THERE IS SO MUCH MORE RULES AND SECURITY AND LESS FREADOM IN AMERICA , ITS BECAUSE OF people LIKE THIS !!!
I HOPE THEY FIND THE PERSON WHO DID IT !! AND IF THEY DONT THEN THIS IS TO YOU "PIGLIT SNATCHER " DONT FORGET ABOUT CARMA CAUSE ITS COMING AROUND!!! "
Ruth Alan wrote on Sep 4, 2008 3:48 AM:
Your story is featured today on oddtodd.com...daily stuff...daily good news...animal edition! "
Mr Blifil wrote on Sep 3, 2008 5:48 AM:
Sal wrote on Sep 2, 2008 8:31 AM: