Possessed Pig Buys The Farm

The pot-bellied pig had everybody fooled.

For the week she lived with owner Debra Pennington on a 20-acre farm near Cheney, Petunia was the perfect pet. She waddled behind Pennington like a puppy. She bathed quietly in the sun and liked to have her fuzzy black belly scratched.

One day last week, though, Petunia became a pig possessed. She broke out of her newly built pen and attacked Pennington’s mother, who was pulling weeds in the garden.

Nedra Fox, 76, got chomped hard on both arms. As Petunia gnawed on the limbs, Pennington smashed the pig’s head with a garbage can lid.

Petunia paused. Big deal, her look said.

“She just sort of walked away and laid down in the shade,” Pennington said. “That was it.”

Fox’s doctors quickly decided the pig should be tested for rabies. They urged Spokane County Animal Control officials to euthanize Petunia and examine her brain, the only way to determine whether pigs have been exposed to the disease.

Pennington wasn’t upset about the decision.

“It wasn’t like I was sad or anything,” she said. “I don’t want some mean animal on my farm. I’ve got ducks and geese and cows and chickens. I told mama, ‘The pig’s going down.”’

An animal control officer took Petunia’s 150-pound carcass to a Spokane veterinarian, who cut off the pig’s head, put it in a bucket and packed it in ice.

The bucket was loaded on a Greyhound bus bound for Seattle, where Petunia’s brain was tested at a state Health Department lab.

Cecil Hater, who works for the county’s health district, waited Friday for the test results. If Petunia had rabies, Fox would need to get a series of shots that cost upwards of $1,500.

Hater said he’d never seen the disease in pigs, though, and doubted if the test would prove positive. He was right.

It was the second pot-bellied pig attack in Eastern Washington this week. Last Saturday, a 50-pound pig was shot to death in Kennewick after it charged its owners.

Like Petunia, that pig was a gift from a relative. Pennington said her sister-in-law decided that every farm needed at least one pig. “No more pigs,” Pennington said. “I don’t care how cute they are.”

, DataTimes