Pig Named Dale Oinkhart Jr. Escapes Pen After BBQ Festival
on May 16, 2022
Travis Stanley Harper from Kingston, North Carolina said he woke up on May 11th to a call from a local resident saying that his pet pig named Dale Oinkhart Jr. was on the loose.
“You know, some people wake up to ‘Good morning beautiful, good morning handsome,”’ Travis said, according to News Observer. “I woke up to ‘Your pig’s on the loose in downtown Kinston.’”
Dale Oinkhart Jr. obviously got his name from the NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Dale Earnhardt Jr. Travis said within hours, he had contacted many people to tell them to keep an eye out for see him.
Travis told everyone that Oinkhart escaped from a pen at Stanley’s Saloon on Wednesday after being part of a pig race the saloon held for the first time during a barbecue festival a week before.
Travis believed the small pig squeezed through a hole in the fence and so he posted a public statement on Facebook letting people know his pig was on the loose and that he had a $20 reward and breakfast at a cafe if someone could safely return Oinkhart.
One person commenting on the statment joked, “He heard the BBQ festival left town, now he can walk around unattended.”
After searching for the pig, according to News Observer, Travis said, “I’m going back to my house to take these boots off and put my running shoes on. If I don’t find him in a few hours, I’m forming a search party.”
Eventually, one local resident commented on his post saying that they spotted the small piglet running around behind a deli in town called Whiskey Pig.
“I ran there soon as I saw this comment but I think he got some intel and took off before I could get there… these aren’t your average piglets we’re dealing with here,” Travis wrote on Facebook.
Eventually, around 2pm on Wednesday, Travis and some fellow pig-wranglers were finally able to run Oinkhart down and corner him near Kinston Housing Authority Apartments. At last, the pig was captured and the hunt was over.
“Thankful for a safe capture and return home for Dale Oinkhart Jr.,” Stanley’s Saloon posted on Facebook.
