By ALEXANDER SIMONE

Staff writer

Marion police officer Aaron Slater was surprised Thursday evening by a call to catch a pair of escaped pigs.

“I didn’t know what kind of pigs they were,” he said. “I just saw they were pigs and I wanted them back in the pen so they weren’t out running around. They looked like they would run through people.”

The pigs didn’t stray far from their pen in the 600 block of N. Cedar St., but Slater had limited experience with the animals and didn’t know what to expect.

“I’ve never been around a pig in my life other than at the zoo,” he said.

Pigs of any sort are not allowed in Marion. The animal owners were told they had to move the pigs outside city limits, Slater said.

Nearby residents remained good-humored about the effort to round up the wayward pigs, he said.

“It was definitely one of the funnier calls I’d gotten, with all the reports and what people were telling me,” he said. “They were saying the pigs were having a good old time out by themselves.”