When New York City police got a call about a “vicious animal” roaming the streets in the south Bronx the day after Mother’s Day, they were not sure what to expect.
But the 70-pound pot-bellied pig they found rummaging through some garbage was as friendly as could be.
“You could tell this piggy was used to people. He let me pet his head and he was pretty calm,” officer Luther Bynum said, according to NYPD News.
He was so friendly that hed tried to play with the officers who came to rescue him.
“He was having such a good time that he did not want to get into the cage,” Bynum said.
Police eventually coaxed him into the cage and brought him to the station where an animal rescue organization came to collect him. According to NYPD News, when reps from Animal Care and Control (ACC) saw him, they were so charmed, they named him “Kalamazoo” on the spot.
Kalamazoo’s history is still a mystery but staffers at ACC estimate that he is about two years old and might have been wandering the streets for months because he was malnourished.
Pigs are not allowed as pets in New York City, but Kalamazoo might have been someone’s pet that got too big, ACC’s director of marketing, Katy Hansen, speculates.
“It’s pretty peculiar,” she said, according to the New York Daily News. “Pigs are considered wild animals. It is illegal to have a potbellied pig as a pet. If you see them when they are babies they are so cute.”
Even as an adult though, Kalamazoo is a charmer.
“He’s a staff favorite,” Hansen said.
And his story has a happy ending. A place called Pets Alive in Middletown, New York, has taken him to their upstate sanctuary where he will live out the rest of his days.
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