SAN ANTONIO – Animal Control Services have rounded up four pigs in the past week.
The latest incident involved a pot-bellied pig named Polly that ACS officers picked up Thursday in a neighborhood near Babcock Road and Bamberger Park.
Polly was rounded up two days before another pot-bellied pig named Buttercup was found wandering at a park off Grissom Road. Officers bribed Buttercup with donuts to rescue her.
ACS officials said Polly has a personality all her own.
"This one is a little different from Buttercup in that I think she will pretty much eat anything that we put in there," ACS chief field operations officer Shannon Simms said. "She's a little less discreet about what she eats. She's just a hungry girl."
Another pig, Boss Hog, was found on the back porch of a Westside home on Friday.
Before the three big pigs were caught wandering, ACS officers picked up a wild piglet, which was taken to a wildlife rescue.
Buttercup and Polly are still at ACS campus while staff works with out-of-jurisdiction rescues to try and find the pigs permanent homes.
"These animals are prohibited. These animals are not for adoption," Simms said. "We work very extensively with professional rescues that specialize in these types of animals, species of breeds that we deal with, that we make sure that we're not going to run into another situation where there's a Buttercup or Boss Hog or this young lady (Polly) ends up back out in the streets."
Simms wants residents to know that pigs are illegal inside the San Antonio city limits, and that finding these pigs loose is a safety issue for the public and for the animals.
"We continue to come across folks with prohibited animals within the city limits," Simms said. "Just kind of displaying by her size (Polly's size). Even though she is not aggressive, she's definitely an animal that's large enough to injure someone inadvertently."
Residents are asked if they come across a wandering pig to call 311.
ACS officers also encourage people not to feed pigs because it will make it harder to capture them in the long run.