Escaping pigs keep police on the run Bar Harbor swine returned to pen

BAR HARBOR – Arnold and Friend, two hefty and persistent porkers, escaped twice from their pen on Friday night to cavort on the Eagle Lake Road until police, neighbors and passers-by lured the omnivorous swine back to the farm with a bucket of grain.

“I’m going to estimate one of them was probably 800 pounds anyway,” Lt. Jim Pinkham – who explained his last name was spelled like pink and ham – of the Bar Harbor Police Department said Monday. “It was big. The other one was 500 pounds.”

The two pigs belong to farmer Dustin Eirdosh, who was away from home when the pigs first sought freedom at about 7 p.m.

“They were a hazard initially,” Pinkham said. “They weren’t gonna go [home] if they didn’t want to. We spent about an hour or so putting them in ourselves.”

A neighbor helping with the hunt contributed the bucket of grain used to coax the pigs back to the right property.

“They just followed the scent,” the lieutenant said.

The pigs – which Pinkham dubbed Arnold, after the popular artiodactylous character of the 1960s and ’70s television show “Green Acres,” and Friend – made a second break for freedom at about 10 p.m.

Another officer, the neighbors and two people who happened to be passing by joined forces to lure the pigs back home once more.