Farmer’s Pet Boar Spared Execution

AUBENAS, France — A wild boar named Chirac was saved from a death sentence Sunday after villagers battled for its right to live as the pet of a 60-year-old bachelor.

French law forbids the rearing of wild boars, and farmer Louis Evesque had been ordered to have his 132-pound pet, trained to follow and sit like a dog, shot by Thursday.

But a regional government official bowed to pressure from Evesque’s 200 neighbors in this isolated village near the southern town of Aubenas and canceled the boar’s execution.

Village Mayor Jean-Marie Roux said of the boar, named after former French Premier Jacques Chirac: “Evesque loves it as much as a child. It is like his son.”