A couple were left stunned after discovering an enormous half-blind PIG fast asleep in their greenhouse following its break-in to their back garden where it devoured all their carrots. Lauren Londors and Jordan Walsh, both 28, awoke to find the runaway pig slumbering peacefully after it had made a bolt for freedom from a neighbouring farm. The pair were left baffled after being alerted to the escapee farmyard creature by neighbours at around 9am on Saturday (19/7).
Perplexed Jordan began telephoning around before a local farm confirmed one of their pigs – named Patrick – had managed to break free overnight. However they said they would be unable to retrieve Patrick until 8pm that evening – so Lauren and Jordan cordoned him off in the greenhouse where he had “made himself at home”. After devouring his way through the couple’s harvest of carrots Patrick then enjoyed a “fat nap” for several hours before farm staff finally turned up.
They managed to entice partially-blind Patrick out of the garden by rattling a bucket of feed to guide him into a neighbouring field. Finance worker Jordan, of Linford, Essex, said: “We still don’t know how Patrick got into our garden. Neither does the farm because he’s partially blind. I couldn’t believe the texts from our neighbours – I thought they were having us on.
“I couldn’t get over the size of him either – he was like the King Kong of pigs. We had plans to go sofa shopping during the day, so we barricaded him in the greenhouse where he’d made himself comfortable and asked the neighbours to keep an eye on him.” Jordan and Lauren revealed that the pig – whom they affectionately dubbed ‘Richard Big Ham’ after Clarkson’s Farm – “made himself at home” in their greenhouse.
Jordan added: “I don’t even know how he got in there because he’s so huge. He slept much of the day, so he was no trouble.” After ringing a local farm, just a three-minute stroll from their house, the couple decided to carry on with their day. Insurance worker Lauren said: “Neighbours who kept an eye on him said that he just laid down and slept for most of the day.” The farm team arrived at 8pm with a 4×4 truck and a bucket of feed to collect Patrick.
Lauren added: “Patrick got up like he’d been at a heavy wedding, so he must have been comfy. It took a bit of time for them to lure him out but they used the bucket of feed to guide him into a field off the back of our garden. After that, they said, ‘shut your gate, we’ll take it from here’. If we didn’t have video and images, no one would believe it. We still can’t but it was a laugh. We hope that Patrick got back home safe.”