Boys in blue bring home the bacon

Cartoon / Rod Emmerson

It may sound like someone's telling porkies, but Timaru police were on a serious mission when they squared off with a 100kg pig.

Officers were called out on Tuesday night to a dark-coloured boar, believed to be a kunekune or Captain Cooker, wandering on a semi-rural road and causing a traffic hazard on the outskirts of the South Canterbury city.

Two constables were dispatched to the bring home the bacon.

However, it was not long before back-up was needed as the imposing beast began playfully chasing one of the officers around his patrol car.

Sergeant Greg Sutherland, coincidentally a pig farmer in a former life, went to the aid of his unnerved constables, and animal control was also called in to help out.

The owner could not be located, so a wand with a noose was used by the animal control officer to control the pig, "much to the pig's dismay".

"And when I got there, with equipment ready to dispose of it if necessary, the pig was standing in the grass at arm's length to the animal control officer. And I thought 'well, we can't shoot it really'," Mr Sutherland said.

"So I was rolling around in the grass for a while. I upended it on the hind legs and sat on it, and we tried to hog-tie it, which was unsuccessful because [with] its little fat legs, the rope kept slipping off him."

After about 20 minutes of "continuous squealing", they managed to tie the pig up. Four police officers and the animal control officer were needed to get the pig on to the back of a ute.

"And two of us sat on it while we drove it to the pound. We could have destroyed it, but we decided it was too nice a pig to do that to the owner. So, hopefully, it gets claimed."

Late yesterday, the Timaru District Council still had the pig impounded.