450-pound pig wanders in Bradford road, eats cookie, becomes viral video star

BRADFORD, Maine — According to the novelist Robert Heinlen, “Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”

But give a pig a cookie? You end up with an online video that is making the social network rounds in Maine and beyond.

This particular pig’s tale began on Saturday as Jamie Smith was on his way home from the Bradford Dump and spotted something large lumbering down the road.

“I thought at first it was a moose,” Smith said on Tuesday. “But as it got closer I saw it was a 450-pound pig just walking up the road aimlessly.”

Smith, like most Mainers, is social and prone to stop and chat with passers’-by through the rolled-down window of his car.

“He was a friendly little bugger,” Smith said of the pig whose name he later learned is Buster. “We had a little conversation and I happened to have some cookies my mom had must made right out of the oven, so I gave him one.”

Smith also filmed and narrated the entire exchange, saying when he shared the video of Buster eating one of his mom Jean Smith’s peanut butter chocolate chip cookies to her, she could not believe it.

“I got the dickens from my mom for giving one of her cookies to that pig,” he said.

Cookie shared, Smith left Buster to his roamings and learned the next day at the Bradford General Store that this particular piggy had made it all the way home.

“The owner told me she had seen the video and was glad she did,” Smith said. “That’s how she knew he was missing.”

All in all, Smith said the brief roadside meeting between himself and Buster was a nice break in what could have been just another day in Bradford and it was even worth risking his mother’s wrath.

“He really liked that cookie,” Smith said. “I could see it in his face.”

 

Julia Bayly

About Julia Bayly

Currently reporter/photographer Bangor Daily News with regular bi-weekly column. Freelance travel writer/photographer since 2000.