A Man Had to Get Police Involved When a Pig Started Casually Stalking Him

When police receive calls in the wee hours of a weekend morning, they have reason to be skeptical about the caller’s sobriety. For the officers on duty at the North Ridgeville Police Department in Ohio on Saturday morning at 5:26 a.m., they were particularly leery of a caller who complained he was being followed home by an animal. And not just any animal: a pig. “Riiiight,” the police department joked in their Facebook post on the incident about the “obviously drunk guy.”

But after officers were dispatched to assess the situation, they quickly discovered the call had nothing to do with inebriation — and everything to do with porcine friendliness. (Or over-friendliness, in this case.)

“Upon arrival, they found a very sober male walking eastbound… from the actual Amtrak train station in Elyria, not the bar. Oh, and he was being followed by a pig,” the police account continues. The man, who remains unidentified, had mysteriously picked up an unwanted companion in the form of the 50-lb. pig and “didn’t know what to do,” at which point he called up the cops. “The pig was nudging the person and wanted to be petted,” an officer further explained to NPR.

Ultimately, an officer was able to “wrangle” the animal into the police cruiser, after which she was taken to their dog kennels. (Her name, NPR reports, is Zoey.) An update notes that the pig was returned about three hours later to her owner. As for the man? It seems he has decided not to press charges in the curious case of the pig stalking incident.

Write to Raisa Bruner at raisa.bruner@time.com.