A pony-size pig who held an Australian woman hostage for 10 days inside her home will be removed on Wednesday to a piggery, where his bacon will be saved by a stint on stud duties, rangers said.
The 80 kg (176 pound) pig, nicknamed Bruce, kept self-confessed animal lover Caroline Hayes, 63, in her farmhouse near Uki, in northern New South Wales State, with aggressive demands to be fed, even headbutting her bedroom door at night.
“I picked up a broom and poked him out with it and he snapped it in half with his mouth,” Hayes told Australian media.
She said the pushy pig was as big as a “Shetland pony” and wandered onto her property 11 days ago after being let loose in surrounding rainforest by neighbors.
“One of its eyes it couldn’t see out of, so I put cream in it and I fixed its back up. But apparently it’s actually claimed my land and claimed my place,” Hayes said.
Len Hing, a pest animal ranger from the local Tweed Lismore Rural Lands Protection Board, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that Bruce was friendly, but his large size made him a handful when he was hungry.
“I wouldn’t like to see the pig go as a pet anywhere because he could become a potentially dangerous animal,” he said.
Rangers were to remove the pig on Wednesday and take him to a piggery where he was to be placed on stud duty, Hing said.
A man was charged with burglary after he allegedly broke into a home, ate cheese from the refrigerator, made a mess in a bathroom and fell asleep on a child’s bed. Tracy Mullins, 47, of Billings, was arraigned in District Court on Thursday by video from the county jail.
Mullins pleaded not guilty to burglary. Judge Susan Watters set bail at $5,000 after rejecting a request that he be released without bail. Public defender Richard Phillips, who made the request, said Mullins had been receiving mental-health counseling.
Court records indicate a woman awoke in her home Monday at 8:30 a.m. to the sound of snoring coming from her 2-year-old son’s bedroom. Her son had slept that night with her and her husband.
The woman said she found a strange man sleeping in her son’s bed. She woke her husband and left to call police from a neighbor’s house. The husband confronted the man with an unloaded shotgun and held him until police arrived.
An angry Deltona father whacked his teenage daughter’s boyfriend with a metal pipe after finding the boy naked in his daughter’s room. Authorities say the father, 45, didn’t even know his daughter had a boyfriend or that the youngster had been sneaking into the home for more than a year.
When he heard noises coming from his daughter’s bedroom Thursday morning and saw a stranger standing naked on the girl’s bed, he swung a metal pipe. He then chased the teen out the front door and called police.
The boy was taken to the hospital where doctors closed a head wound with staples.
The father was charged with aggravated battery on a child and bonded out on $10,000.
