Lolita, the 50-plus-pound, five-month-old pot-bellied pig was found roaming in the city’s North End Saturday by a family on Forestview Road.
“Someone woke up and found a pig in their back yard and contacted us,” said Gina Gambino, the city’s head animal control officer. “In all my years as an animal control officer, I never thought I would be picking up a pig in the middle of Bridgeport. But here she was, a big, a dark-colored pig in a little garden area. ”
Gambino acknowledged she is not a pig expert, but roaming pigs are not entirely unprecedented in the state. Gambino recalled that Stratford animal control had corralled a pig on I-95 not long ago. She made a phone call to them and to the state Department of Agriculture.
“They knew exactly what to do,” she said.
The Bridgeport staff put blankets on the floor for comfort and kept Lolita in a separate wing of the kennel “because pigs do get stressed out” by loud noises, according to Gambino.
Gambino went to a farm and bought pig food, and community members, learning about Lolita on social media, brought in fresh vegetables for the pig to eat.
“It was amazing when people came in with fresh vegetables for Lolita — and she thoroughly enjoyed them,” she said.
Gambino made arrangements for the pig to live out her years at a farm run by the state Department of Agriculture, if the owners couldn’t be located. On Thursday afternoon, the owners came forward but they decided to surrender the pig so she could live on the farm, located in Niantic.
(FOX CT - Apr 17, 2015)
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