It’s Lean Times for Pot-Bellies Market: Homeless Porker Goes for $50

The bottom has fallen out of the pot- bellies market.

That is the lesson Gregory Buccella learned Wednesday when his $50 bid got him a 70-pound pot-bellied pig being auctioned by the Burbank Animal Shelter. No one else even showed up to make an offer for the gray, ground-hugging grunter who has resided at the shelter since he was found wandering down Lincoln Avenue in September.

Buccella, a struggling North Hollywood actor, said he has wanted one of the once-popular porkers for several years but did not have the $1,000 or more they cost during their heyday. “I’ve always liked pets but dogs are very, very demanding and even though pigs are social and need affection, they can’t jump on the furniture and they don’t bark,” Buccella said. Besides, he said, “they’re very smart.”

So smart, experienced owners say, that they can develop some annoying habits, such as opening a refrigerator door and eating all the food.

The miniature pigs’ novelty made them popular as pets beginning in the mid-1980s. Some specially bred animals sold for as much as $10,000.

But when owners realized that even pygmy pigs can grow to 100 pounds or more and become aggressive if not given enough attention, they began having second thoughts about the porcines.

During the past six months, said Susan Benedon, a trainer at the Los Angeles Zoo and a member of the Moorpark-based National Committee on Pot-Bellied Pigs, the price of pet store pigs has dropped to as little as $200. Now, she said, some owners are abandoning their pets or, even worse, frying them for dinner.

Benedon said she attended Wednesday’s auction to make sure that whoever purchased the pig, a neutered male whom shelter workers pampered by letting him sleep on a pink blanket in a kennel with a heated floor, seemed responsible.

“I was ready to buy him,” Benedon said of the pig, had Buccella not seemed that he would make a good pet owner.

Phyllis Frisbey, another pot-bellied pig lover who showed up at the auction, agreed. Buccella is “caring, he’s motivated and he’ll be a good dad,” she said.

Shelter Superintendent Fred DeLange said the unnamed pig was the first of the breed that the shelter had taken in. He said the shelter’s practice is to auction animals other than dogs or cats to see if a home can be found.

But the porker did not want to leave when it came time for him to be loaded into the back of Buccella’s Honda Civic. He was grunting in fear when the shelter workers put him in, but quickly quieted down when given a handful of dog biscuits.

“Hey, maybe that’s his name, Biscuits,” Buccella said.