Pigs in a Pokey : Animal Control Officers Remove Pot-Bellies That Had Run of a House

LAKE VIEW TERRACE — One by one they tumbled out, squealing and wriggling from the grasps of SPCA and Humane Society agents. One boar, named “Jaws,” was so big and wild that he had to be moved with a rolling cage onto a waiting truck.

In all, 38 Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs of all sizes and colors, from dingy pink to dirty gray, were herded out of Phyllis Frisbey’s dusty, weed-covered home and hauled away by animal welfare officers Thursday morning.

After an anonymous caller squealed on her to an animal cruelty hot line operated by the SPCA, Los Angeles County Health Department officers checked out the manure-filled, single-story house and declared it unfit for pigs to live in, said Madeline Bernstein, executive director of the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Frisbey was not cited for any criminal offense but will be if she continues to shelter pigs at the house without securing a special permit, Bernstein said.

She said it is illegal to possess the pigs in the city of Los Angeles without such a permit, which limits the number of pigs depending on the space available. They are allowed as pets in some other cities however, including Burbank.

Frisbey--whose van sports a bumper sticker that reads: “Men are not pigs--pigs are gentle and intelligent”--said she took in unwanted pigs in her role as head of an organization devoted to saving the animals.

But the pigs were endangered by overcrowding, the accumulation of manure and the overgrowth of their hooves and tusks, Bernstein said. SPCA veterinarian Chris Cauble said the pigs slept in doghouses but had free run of the house, including the bedroom and living room, which he said stank and were littered with food.

Ranging in size from 30 to more than 100 pounds, they ate from feeding bowls spread throughout the house and the back yard, Cauble said. The front driveway of the house was filled with boxes of decaying fruit.

Humane Society and SPCA officials said that although Frisbey had good intentions, her home--which they said she also shares with three cats, four dogs and an Amazon parrot--just wasn’t large enough to handle so many pigs.

“People think that it’s cute to have these pigs inside their homes,” Bernstein said. “But these pigs can be very aggressive and need more space and water to survive.”

But a defiant Frisbey, co-chairwoman of the Los Angeles Pot Belly Pig Rescue Assn., said she will not change her ways.

“I will sell my house and leave before I give them all up,” Frisbey told a small crowd of reporters in front of her home. “A lot of people dump their pigs and if we don’t do something--they will be killed.”

Frisbey said she was also forced out of a North Hollywood home three years ago for taking in unwanted pigs. “It started with one pig and just went from there,” she said.

The SPCA took some of the pigs to the Wildlife Way Station in Tujunga Canyon and others to various animal shelters.

Although Frisbey said many homeless pigs were referred to her by the SPCA, Bernstein said she was unaware of any such references.

Neighbors had mixed reactions.

“It’s not animal cruelty,” Kate Williams Hayes said. “I think it’s a terrible thing that they are taking them away. Animal control had referred some of the animals to her, so why are they taking them now?”

But Gene Brewster, who lives next door, said he was ecstatic that at least some of the pigs were being removed. He said a rat problem had developed because of the filth.

“You bet I am happy,” Brewster said. “The property was just going downhill.”

Cauble said he met Frisbey, who was well known to several of the animal welfare officers, a few years back when she was fighting to save the pigs.

“Phyllis meant well, but she just got carried away,” Cauble said.