Police Officer Chases and Tackles Pig on the Loose in Utah Neighborhood in Viral Video
The Grantsville City Police Department said two hogs had been loose in the suburban neighborhood for days before finally being caught
Grantsville City Police Department/Facebook
A Grantsville City Police Department officer holding the pigA police officer in Utah has gone viral for using his athletic skills to detain a neighborhood intruder — a porcine one.
On Tuesday, April 4, the Grantsville City Police Department shared a video on Facebook showing off one of its officer's football playing abilities as he attempted to contain two loose pigs in the Salt Lake City-area suburb.
In the video, the officer — identified by FOX 8 as Cory Cooper — could be seen from a car window chasing after a hog through a front yard before tackling it. The person filming could be heard laughing, and as they rolled down the car window, the pig made a shrieking noise.
"Pig situation handled. #onlyingrantsville" the department joked in the caption of its Facebook post.
According to a statement from the department on Facebook, the two hogs were loose on the 700 block of Quirk Street in Grantsville.
"If you are missing some hogs in the area of 700 S Quirk St. they are running at large," the police department wrote. "The city is going to try and trap them, which could be done at the owner's expense. So please, if they are yours try and collect them as soon as possible."
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After being "at large" for two days, according to local station KUTV, officers eventually caught up with the hogs and seemingly had no other choice than to tackle them to the ground — prompting several jokes about the officer needing to go pro for football.
"DEFENSIVE TACKLE?" the outlet wrote when it shared the now-viral clip on TikTok.
"I’m honestly impressed he could catch one lol," one commenter joked. "Those little guys are good at getting away lol."
"The scream😂😂😂," another laughed, referring to the sound let out by the pig in the clip.
This isn't the only recent instance that an unusual animal was taken in by authorities for running around a residential area. In December, wildlife experts received reports about a tiny bear cub living in a Tucson, Ariz., residential neighborhood. The bear cub, whom the Bearizona Wildlife Park staff named Buddy after the main character in Elf, was found weighing just 15 pounds, leaving the staff to wonder how the bear had survived alone in the wilderness.
The official Instagram account for the Bearizona Wildlife Park shared Buddy’s story at the time, writing that Arizona Game and Fish spokesman Mark Hart found the bear cub to be incredibly small for his age.
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“A 15-pound bear should be about four or five months old. The math doesn’t work,” Hart said. “We would have thought that a bear that size would have been picked off by a predator. A coyote, a mountain lion, or even another bear."
Dave O’Connell, Chief Operating Officer of the park, speculated that the bear — who was healthy when found — may have been “illegally fed” by a human.
“It could explain his comfort around humans,” O’Connell said. “It might also explain why he is so small.”
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