Eight little piggies escape from a Kodiak farm is over quickly

Eight little Kodiak piggies went “Wee. Wee. Wee,” all the way home, back to their farm in Bell’s Flat, but not without generating some excitement on the Friends of Kodiak Facebook page.

Footage of eight black and brown piglets trotting down Salmon Berry Drive, which had first glance looked like a team of unharnessed sled dogs, had people asking, “Who do those little piggies belong to?  And from whence did they make their great 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 time of their life?

Piggies on the lam? Or in training for the Idita-HOG? Footage courtesy of Renee Esham who captured them running down Salmonberry Drive.

Well, 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, that her pigs were on the run — and by that time, her husband, Jacob, was close to bringing their adventure to a close.

“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 piglets are just 12 months old, Kodiak born and bred, the offspring of a local sow and boar. As it turns out, her husband Jacob didn’t have much trouble luring them home, because 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 that old marshmallow tricked worked just fine. Jacob Keplinger and a friend were able to coral 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 up enough dirt 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 being on someone’s future dinner plate. Friends and neighbors have already made deposits on them, to buy them when they’re fully grown. ###