British Hams on the Lam Procured by Authorities

Three little pigs went to market. Two got away.

Stop the presses!

This is a cracklin’ good yarn about two pigs named Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Pig, a.k.a. the Tamworth Two.

What you’ll have to decide for yourself is whether it’s mostly about plucky pigs or batty Brits.

Butch and Sundance--who, on closer examination, may turn out to be Thelma and Louise--saved their bacon by burrowing under a slaughterhouse fence in western England last week. A third ginger Tamworth pig taken to market by street sweeper and part-time farmer Arnoldo Dijulio is already ham.

By Friday, the 5-month-old, 100-pound fugitives, though, were national celebrities in Britain, their bristly mugs snouting from the front page of every newspaper and featured on television news nationwide.

Brits love animals. And everybody loves Great Escapes. “Ze Swine have escaped,” said the staid Times. “Great entertainment when pigs can fly to freedom.”

The Tamworth Two swam a river to safety and foraged off the land for a week until Thursday when a giant pig hunt closed in. Trackers used everything from savory King Edward potatoes to a come-hither sow named Samantha to bait the wily boars.

Before the day was over, two tabloid newspapers claimed to have captured the renegade Butch and to be protecting him in a safe sty.

One newspaper claimed that it had been “grunted” an exclusive interview: “We foraged, that’s what pigs do, stupid.” But another was clearly perpetrating a hoax, because the pigs it interviewed wore disguising Blues Brothers glasses.

The Independent commissioned its resident poet to muse on the great chase. The chorus of “The Ballad of the Tamworth Pigs” goes this way. Sing together now: “O not for us the butcher’s knife / And not for us the stun gun / For by the time the week is out / They’ll know of us in London.”

While a helicopter circled overhead and more than 100 spectators, including photographers and camera crews from around the world, jostled among earnest pig catchers, Sundance was brought to bay in a backyard Thursday night. But in one last heroic surge for freedom, he ran through a policeman’s legs and into the embracing darkness. By Friday, Sundance had acquired the aura of true greatness.

*

“New York is crazy for this story,” said one American network correspondent from the heart of Wiltshire pig country.

On Friday, civilization, alas, proved too strong for Sundance. The first two tranquilizing darts fired by a vet bounced off his tough ginger skin, but a third brought him down.

There is a happy ending. The Tamworth Two are worth more alive than dead. They are promised a safe and comfortable retirement befitting doughty pigs with wings.

As Independent poet Martin Newell lauded, “And they became the heroes / Of a sentimental nation / As the Cassidy and Sundance / Of a porcine situation.”