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DAILY NEWS Pig out: 300-pound porker escapes the daily grind By Peter Reuell Thursday, December 12, 2002 SHERBORN - One's an escaped, and reformed, cow. The other's an escaped, and reformed, pig. Is it really wise to put these two together? Officials at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn are about to find out, as Babe the Pig yesterday moved in with Emily the Cow, in what seems a sure recipe for the world's first inter-species jailbreak. The 300-plus pound Yorkshire sow came to the Abbey courtesy of Tom Gajewski, a Warren cop and farmer who helped capture the animal after her headline-grabbing, two-day taste of freedom from Dec. 3-5. “She's been through quite a bit," Gajewski said yesterday, while watching Babe root through her new home, and nibble at a box of greens. "But she's a sweetheart.” Babe is a story after Emily's heart.
After scaling a 4-foot grate and leaping from a truck headed for a Charlton butcher shop, the pig kept police and animal control officers guessing by evading capture for two days. A Warren Police officer during the day, Gajewski was one of those who spent hours chasing the wily oinker, only to have her slip away. "We chased it all day, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.," he said. Babe was holed up in the woods for two days, where police assumed she'd either succumbed to the snow and cold or been eaten by coyotes that roam the area. But Babe had other ideas. Two days after disappearing, she resurfaced, and was captured by Gajewski and his brother Bill, using a bucket of grain and a nylon hammock. “She's lucky,” he said. “She survived jumping from a truck doing 40, she survived the cold weather for two nights, and a pack of coyotes. She just beat the odds.” Babe's neighbor, Emily, arrived at the abbey in 1995 after her escape from a Hopkinton slaughterhouse vaulted her to fame. Emily spent five weeks in hiding before landing in her current home. 
The celebrity Holstein staged another escape last year, breaking out
of her pen at the abbey and wandering onto routes 16 and 27 before
being recaptured. But pig and cow never did come face to face -- or
snout to snout -- yesterday.Emily and barn-mate Gabriel, another rescued cow, have a tendency to be territorial when it comes to their barn, the Peace Abbey's Lewis Randa said, so the pair were distracted with a bale of hay, giving abbey workers time to build a makeshift chute to Babe's new home. After backing the pig's trailer into the barn, and a little bit of coaxing, Babe emerged and found her way into her pen. Things will take some getting used to, though. After spending a few minutes rooting, Babe quickly mapped out a nest in a pile of hay and settled down for some well deserved rest. And now that she won't have to worry about another trip to the slaughterhouse, she'll get plenty of that, abbey co-founder Meg Randa said. “Babe is just going to have a wonderful home,” she said. “She'll be provided with a warm stall and plenty of food and water, and come spring we'll build a door and fence in an area for her.” |
Babe was holed up in the woods for two days, where police assumed
she'd either succumbed to the snow and cold or been eaten by
coyotes that roam the area. But Babe had other ideas. 