Runaway pet piglet has set up home with flock of sheep next door and doesn't want to go home

A runaway pet piglet that thinks she's a sheep has set up home with the flock next door, evading capture for almost two weeks. Little Babe fled from her new home in Twynholm, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, just moments after her owners' trailer parked up at the smallholding they've just moved to. And this little piggy does not want to go home, despite many attempts to capture her. Cat Galloway, 34, owner of the fugitive porker, said she has spent "hours and hours" trying to catch her with the help of neighboring farmer Willie McMorran, whose field she is hiding out in. Cat said: "She escaped pretty much as soon as we got her home. She has been out in the field with the sheep for 12 days now and we've not stopped trying to get her back in. We have tried rounding her up, cornering her, netting her and feeding her but she's too fast and doesn't tire at all.
"She changes direction in a heartbeat and can run at you, then suddenly change her mind. I've never known a pig like her." Food is usually a sure fire way to get a pig's attention but Cat said even waving cake and bananas under her snout isn’t luring Babe back to her own farm. She said: “Because of her age, she’s just left her mum so she's not had much chance with people and food. She's not aware yet that people feed her so she's not interested in anything we offer. From what I can see she's been eating on the road, eating whatever she can find. She's definitely not daft, she knows where the food is." And even a quad bike hasn’t managed to keep up with Babe’s little trotters long enough to catch her. Cat, husband Bill, and their four children moved to Glengap from the village of Twynholm a year ago. Cat said the countless attempts to capture the fugitive porker have left everybody feeling “exhausted”.

She said: "I've never worked as hard in my life. I feel like I've done a 50-mile cross country. Every muscle in my body aches. The kids have been trying non-stop to get her home. But they were so exhausted they have given up now.” This is the first time the Galloway family have owned pigs, picking up the three small Kunekune piglets on March 6. And Cat said it has definitely been more eventful than she expected. She said: "We didn't know they could run so fast. We wanted a small breed, similar to the pot belly, that would be good with children and animals. And we picked girls because they are generally more easy-going - not in this case though. I remember the breeder originally telling us she was the shy one, but she is wild. I've never seen anything like it before." She joked that the little pig knows she is outsmarting her owners.

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She said: "Pigs are instinctively very smart, people don't give them enough credit. They just think pig, bacon, sausage. But Babe looks right at you when you're trying to catch her and you can just tell she is thinking 'ha, you've not caught me yet - do you give up?', it's just so funny." Cat added: “She's such a funny little pig, she is following the sheep and they are following her, they seem to have accepted her. They do ram and head butt her though if she gets too cocky. She sleeps amongst them at night keeping warm and has been eating the feed the farmer’s putting out for the sheep. She isn’t losing any weight and Willie finds the whole thing pretty amusing too.” In a last-ditch attempt to outsmart the runaway piglet, farmer Willie McMorran will now attempt to lead the pig home with the sheep. Cat said: “Babe follows the sheep so Willie’s plan is to try and load them all into a trailer including pig so we can finally get her home to her sisters.”