Can a pig start a wild goose chase? Whether that can happen or not, a St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana porker led the local Sheriff's office on a brisk chase recently. 

Police in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, had a bit of an unusual call the other day: A pig was on the loose. 

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office described the adventure in a Facebook post on March 13 — noting the irony of police officers being summoned to help capture a pig. 

"Oh, the irony with this one," the Facebook post read, also noting, "There's likely gonna be various pics (and possibly videos) going around the ole face app, and we like to get ahead of the joke if we can." 

"Heck… Let's just embrace it," the department also wrote in the post.

In the post, the department said a call came in "regarding a stray Miss Piggy running loose off Dixie Ranch Rd. in Slidell." 

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's office is to be commended, not only for recognizing the irony (many people don't get it) but also for seeing the humor in the situation and getting ahead of it. Not all situations involving runaway swine are so easily dealt with.

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Fortunately, the pig, dubbed "Miss Piggy," was quickly rounded up.

The pig was brought to the St. Tammany Parish Department of Animal Services after unsuccessful attempts to find her owners. 

"She was reunited with four of her co-defendants," said the Facebook post. "Apparently, she and her buddies busted out." 

There was a similar incident earlier this month in Wisconsin, where a porker aptly named "Kevin Bacon" got loose. (Footloose?) 

Jake Molgaard, 40, and his family live in Brighton, Wisconsin, located in Kenosha County. They do not own pigs, so they had quite a shock when they spotted the 450-pound Kevin Bacon on their security camera. 

"My wife spotted an unusual-shaped figure on our driveway camera walking along our garage," Molgaard told the Associated Press, adding that the pig "ended up coming right up to our back door."

As for the names these porcine perpetrators bear, naming critters isn't that unusual. Our oldest daughter has for years kept rabbits and run an informal bunny rescue; one of her personal bunnies, a big English Lop buck, is named Rabbert DeNiro.

All fun aside, it's important to keep stock contained, not only for their safety — both Miss Piggy and Kevin Bacon were lucky enough that no humans decided to surreptitiously convert them to chops and side meat — but for the people in the area as well. Pigs are strong, tough, surprisingly fast, and intelligent. Add that to an animal that can become aggressive without any apparent reason, and you've got a big, possibly dangerous critter. 

As to how tough pigs can be: Along about 1977 or so, I was out hunting pheasants with a buddy, and while on our way to another hunting site, driving my Dad's pickup at 60 miles per hour more or less, a big boar came right out of the ditch in front of us. There was no time to hit the brakes; we hit the porker with a big thud and felt the truck jump as the pig rolled under it. By the time we got the truck stopped and got out to pick up what we expected to be a dead pig, we saw him, legging it down the ditch, no doubt looking for a friendlier locale. From the way he was moving, he didn't appear to be seriously hurt.

Pigs are big, tough, fast, and can be mean. They can be funny and cute, especially when young, but the grown animals are no joke, and handling them is best left to people with experience.

This seems appropriate: