WESTMINSTER : Thief Gets Away With 3 Little Pigs

As their 300-pound mother lay patiently on her side, 10 squealing pink piglets nursed in a row Friday with abandon and glee, oblivious of the three siblings who had disappeared.

The three Yorkshire piglets were stolen from a pen at Westminster High School by an unknown thief earlier this week, police said.

School officials say that if the missing piglets, born 11 days ago, aren’t reunited with their mother soon, they could die.

“Pigs normally stay with their mother for four weeks before they are weaned,” teacher Norm Makanishi said. “If they were taken by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, they might end up with dead pigs.”

When one of the piglets was gone from the pen Monday morning, Makanishi said he thought someone might have been pulling a prank. But then two more piglets had disappeared Wednesday morning.

“Why would someone take them?” asked Stirling Iverson, a 14-year-old freshman who cared for the sow through her 114-day pregnancy as part of a class project and now watches over her offspring.

“There’s just no reason for it,” he said. “You can’t get much ham or bacon out of them at this point. You probably couldn’t get even one strip.”

The pigs were born on the school’s five-acre farm where agriculture students raise livestock and crops as class projects.

Stirling said the piglets weigh about five pounds each and grow to more than 200 pounds before they are auctioned.

Stirling’s mother, Kathy Iverson, a science teacher at the school, said the family had spent several nights at the farm waiting for the mother to give birth.

“People are shocked and angry,” she said. “All the kids out here are worried about the rest of the pigs. I think half of the school has been out here to see these piglets.”

Other students in the program expressed their anger over the theft Friday.

“I think it’s crummy and stooping pretty low to come and steal pigs,” said 17-year-old Robert Evans, who is raising a steer as a class project.

Makanishi, who has run the school’s agriculture department for 16 years, said that as a precaution, the pigpen is now enclosed with barbed wire.

Stirling Iverson, who plans to become a veterinarian, had this plea to the pig-naper: “If they are not doing so well, give them back so they can live.”