AUBURN — A passel of pigs kept local police and an animal control officer busy for nearly an hour Tuesday afternoon as they tried to wrangle the escaped hogs into their pen near the Turner town line.

Five hogs were spotted on Route 4 just before 1 p.m., when a passing Androscoggin County Sheriff’s deputy herded them off the highway, said Auburn police Lt. Rick Coron. From there, officer James Daigle and Animal Control Officer Wendell Strout joined the pig scramble.

“It took longer to find out who owned them than to get them back in,” Strout said.

The local pig farmer was eventually identified as Daryl LaMore of 34 West Waterman Road. LaMore began keeping the pigs this summer, he said, and plans to eat them.

“Pigs are known for trying to leave their pen” and go looking for food, Coron said, which was exactly what these porkers did Tuesday.

Daigle advised LaMore of his at-large livestock, Coron said. But the pigs continued to defy the officers’ attempts to contain them, investigating a chicken coop and rooting through a neighbor’s backyard during their brief taste of freedom, even after LaMore joined the pursuit.

They’ve escaped before, LaMore said, but have never wandered as far as they did Tuesday. “They were on a mission,” he said. “I’m going to go home and beef up security now.”

The men finally got one of the hogs into its pen, and the rest followed soon after.

“Officer Daigle did a wonderful job” in his turn as the Pied Piper of pigs, Strout said.

“It’s not uncommon for us to deal with livestock,” Coron said: Auburn police have been called to deal with cows in New Auburn and horses on Stevens Mills Road in the past. “But it’s not something they train us for at the academy.”

An initial call to police identified the animals as “beef critters.”

“Somebody maybe didn’t know the difference,” Strout said.

“That’s kind of what we Mainers do,” LaMore said. “Blow stuff out of proportion.”

acullen@sunjournal.com

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