Little Lost Pig Finds a New Foster Home : Simi Valley: Landlord says the porker can’t live in North Hollywood rental. Pot-Bellied Pig Assn. locates another owner.

When Gregory Buccella took in a homeless pot-bellied pig as a pet this week it was his landlord who squealed like he was about to be butchered.

On Wednesday Buccella was the only bidder for Biscuits, a 70-pound abandoned pig auctioned off by the Burbank Animal Shelter after it was found wandering the streets two months ago.

But when the owner of the three-bedroom house Buccella and a roommate rent in North Hollywood learned of the new tenant through news reports, he decreed that Buccella could not bring home the bacon.

To avoid ending up on the streets himself, Buccella went looking for a new home for the porker and now Biscuits bunks in Simi Valley.

Buccella, an actor who waits on tables while waiting for success, acknowledges that he should have gotten his landlord’s permission before bidding $50 for his new pet.

But, he said, the landlord “said it was OK to get a dog if I wanted to and I didn’t think there was that much difference.”

Buccella turned to the Southern California Pot-Bellied Pig Assn. for help in finding a new home for the peripatetic pig.

The association contacted Karna Bose, a Simi Valley resident who said she had wanted one of the low-slung pigs as a pet for several years but had been unable to afford the $1,000 or more they had cost until prices began to plunge recently.

“I have a big yard and I’ve got dogs and rabbits and my parrot . . . and now I’ve got my baby,” she said. “They are the cutest little guys you ever did see and they have the neatest personalities.”

She picked up her new pet Thursday and said he seemed to be adjusting easily, despite his foster pig-like odyssey. “He slept in the house last night and he did great. He buries himself under the blanket at night.”

Bose said she won’t stick with the name Biscuits, as he had been dubbed by Buccella.

Phyllis Frisbey, a Los Angeles resident who helped found the potbellied pig owners’ group, said the plight of Bose’s new pet demonstrates that people still are uneducated about the animals which became popular as pets beginning in the mid-1980s.

“They’re not going to destroy your house or your lawn, the most they do is tear up paper,” she said.

Frisbey and other pig owners have successfully pressured many Los Angeles County cities, including Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and West Hollywood, to pass ordinances treating pot-bellied pigs as domestic pets rather than subjecting them to the restrictions usually applied to farm animals in urban areas.

Los Angeles County allows the animals under certain conditions, as does the city of Simi Valley.

But Frisbey said the Los Angeles City Council has failed to act on the issue, even though hundreds or even thousands of city residents keep them as pets.

“It’s just the fact that it’s a pig,” she said. “These guys have bad P.R.”