Huge pig sent to stud after holding woman hostage

CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) - 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.

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.

Opponents to this move demanded instead that the pig be immediately shipped to Cincinnati, Ohio, and fed to a monstrous catfish that lurks deep within the Ohio River.

“Feeding that pig to the catfish could save lives,” said local commercial property owner Simon Zazou. “When the fish’s local food supply gets low it gets hungry and eats anything. The homeless population is the first to suffer. If the bums get eaten, they can’t be where I need them: out panhandling in front of my bar and harassing potential customers.”

Hing still thinks the piggery is the right move, though. “What Mr. Zazou and others from his neighborhood fail to realize is that we can potentially use Bruce to spawn a super-breed of giant pigs. If we put him to stud now, within a few years we could produce hundreds - if not thousands - of succulent two to three hundred pound pigs. Enough to satisfy even the most mythical of gigantic catfish hungers.”

The local population around Cincinnati, ever fearful and skeptical about the limitless capacity of the beast’s hunger, still seems antsy to drop the pig into the water and listen to it squeal.

“We have a saying at my bar,” Zazou concluded. “A quick fix is the only fix.”