After 5 Years of Secrecy, Pig Is Now Out of the Bag

Marianne Barnes has been harboring a big secret these past five years, and it hasn’t been easy.

She has lied to her landlady, lived on the outlaw side of Anaheim civic codes and distracted various city workers to keep them from peering over the alley wall into the little wooden pen in her side yard.

All to shield Poppy.

But now the secret’s out. All 300 pounds of her. Poppy, an out-sized Vietnamese potbellied pig that Barnes raised from a piglet, went off Monday afternoon to hog heaven, which in this case is the one-acre home of Steve and Karen Williams in a rural area of Yorba Linda.

“It breaks my heart,” said Barnes, 72, her eyes welling after volunteers from Los Angeles-based Pigs Without Partners squeezed Poppy into a pet carrier for the trip. “Look at the nice people she’s going to live with. It makes me happy.”

Barnes insists her heart was in the right place when she took in Poppy after the pig’s owners decided they couldn’t keep her. Barnes has taken in unwanted animals for the 20 years she has lived in the house, she said.

But she decided to keep Poppy, which she bought from acquaintances of her boss, because of the pig’s personality.

“She was just like a little firecracker,” Barnes said. “She was just a feisty little thing.”

At first, Barnes hid Poppy from her landlady, who didn’t allow pets.

But as the pig grew, keeping it a secret was stressful, Barnes said.

The landlady would stop by and edge toward Poppy’s small wooden pen, separated from the alley by a shoulder-high fence.

“If it looked like she was going in that direction, I’d talk to her about something else,” Barnes said. “I had to use all my wits. When the city workers would come [to work in the alley], I’d talk his head off. I knew he couldn’t wait to get away from me, but I couldn’t let him look over that wall.”

Barnes saw the handwriting on the wall when the landlady told her a few weeks ago that she was going to sell the house.

“I had to do something,” Barnes said. “The jig was up.”

The pig’s new owners said they’ll put Poppy on a diet to drop her weight down to a healthier range.