HUNTINGTON BEACH : City Council Hears Plea for Pet Pigs

Megan Oswald wants to be the proud owner of a miniature potbellied pig, so she went to City Hall this week to lobby for a change in city law so neighbors won’t squeal.

Oswald, 40, recently made a down payment on a little potbellied bundle with black hair, white stockings and a pink nose that she has already named Lilly May. But while the city’s residential pet ordinance allows families to keep one duck, one goose or one rabbit, no pigs are allowed.

Oswald, therefore, went before the City Council on Monday night and asked them to add potbellied pigs to the list of permissible exotic household beasts.

“It doesn’t roam like a cat and it’s easily confined,” Oswald told council members. “It doesn’t bark or anything and it doesn’t jump on people and cause trouble.”

Mayor Jim Silva said Tuesday that he is rooting for Oswald.

“I have no problems with potbellied pigs,” he said. “I understand they are very expensive and owners take good care of them.”

Councilman Don MacAllister said that potbellied pigs are becoming the pets of the ‘90s, and that it is “interesting” that he has never heard a complaint about one in the city.

Oswald said potbellied pigs are specifically bred as pets and can be housebroken in a day. Besides that, they’re vegetarians and are pretty much odor-free, she said. She plans to keep a wading pool handy so Lilly May won’t have to roll around in the mud to get cool.

“They’re real smart and interesting. I like the sounds they make--the grunts and squeals,” said Oswald, who has been enamored of pigs ever since reading “Charlotte’s Webb” as a child. “They are real curious and don’t smell and have no fleas. They’re not as friendly as dogs, but they’re friendly.”

She told officials Monday that the largest miniature potbellied pigs are “about the size of a Labrador retriever with its legs cut off, but not all the way off.”

Megan Oswald and Lilly May. “They’re real smart,” she says of potbellied pigs.