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A Vietnamese pot-bellied pig captured in Waterville is moving to Casco's Mayberry Hill Preschool.

By AMY CALDER, Blethen Maine News Service June 26, 2008

WATERVILLE — Four days after being captured on West River Road, the Vietnamese pot-bellied pig that has been roaming the city for weeks is going to a new home in Casco.

He should fit right in at the town's Mayberry Hill Preschool, according to Mac Simpson, a Colby College senior whose parents own the school.

"We have, like, 30 kids," Simpson said Wednesday. "My dad, 10 years ago, started the idea of getting a petting zoo, so I built the fences and stuff like that and over the years we've had as many as four pot-bellied pigs, sheep, goats, donkeys. We used to have llamas, ducks -- we have had a lot of ducks."

The pig will join another Vietnamese pot-bellied pig named Little Gordy, who lives at Mayberry and was orphaned last winter when his parents, Big Gordy and Petunia, died after leaving the shelter and going out into a snowstorm, Simpson said.

"The little one's all lonely so we figured this one will just keep it warm in the winter and keep it company," he said.

Simpson, 22, an economics major and Colby basketball player, sort of adopted the pig by default.

Last month, some Colby football players went on a classified-ad Web site to find a pig to roast at the end-of-school pig roast, Simpson said.

They bought a pig to cook and purchased the charcoal-gray pot-bellied pig to play with at the event.

"But when they got to the pig roast, he slipped right out of his leash and ran away," he said. "If you were a pig and you go to a pig roast, you'd run away, too. It's not the ideal spot to hang out."

The football players tried for two weeks to capture the pig, which would get close enough to feed but kept running away whenever anyone attempted to nab it.

The players knew that Simpson's parents had a farm and, unknown to him, planned to give him the pig when they were done with it. They told him about their plan after the escape.

Wednesday night, Simpson's parents, Barbara and Kelly, were scheduled to retrieve the pig from Donald and Judy Shores' farm in Oakland, where it has been since being captured Saturday.

As for a name for the new pig, Simpson said usually the children name the animals, but there might be an exception here.

"We'll probably name it Colby because we got it from Colby," he said.