That'll do, pigs

POST FALLS - Marvin Tyacke's pigs must be pretty smart.

"I think the red one has a master's degree from MIT," Tyacke said, laughing at his Post Falls home.

His trio of porky pals nosed their way out of their pen in his backyard, not just once, but twice in the same day. That led to one frantic neighborhood chase and an exasperated, exhausted owner wondering if he should have bought them three months ago.

"No," he said on Wednesday as he readied to feed them their dinner of slop and bread. "That's one of the things we do, we think we're smart at the time."

What changed his mind happened when he was relaxing in his recliner on a recent lazy afternoon and his grandson, Paul, burst in.

"The pigs are out!" he shouted.

For a moment, it didn't register with the dozing Tyacke.

"Pigs?" he said to himself. "Oh my God, my pigs!"

Weighing in at more than 200 pounds each, that's a lot of bacon roaming free.

The hinge of the gate to their pen, he said, had been put on improperly and Red, Whitey and Babe managed to nose it open and bolt for 16th Street.

The 81-year-old Tyacke jumped up, grabbed his hat and set out in pursuit of the trio of roaming oinkers.

A neighbor, Bill Bodak, was already trying to herd them near Cecil Road. Together, over the next 15 minutes, they pushed, waved, yelled and cajoled them back home.

With his mission accomplished, Tyacke decided to first get a cup of coffee in the kitchen before collecting his tools to fix the faulty hinge.

Bad idea.

As he looked out the window into his yard, those same three pigs were snorting, grunting and racing across the green grass once more.

"I could see they opened the gate again and got out again," Tyacke said, smiling.

With neighbors looking on and laughing - or staring in disbelief - Tyacke cut off the sneaking swine and corralled them yet again.

Tyacke adopted the pigs about three months ago when they were about six weeks old and weighed 30 pounds. They'll face a trip to the butcher when they hit 290 pounds or six months old.

They're pretty sharp animals, he said, so he might have to give them something more to do than eat, wallow in mud and soak in the sun.

"They've got nothing to do but figure out how to get out," he said.