A 300-Pound Pig Is Rescued From Los Angeles Wildfires

As wildfires blazed through Los Angeles on Wednesday, Ellen Marie Bennett shared a plea with her Instagram followers. Could someone, ideally someone with a spare trailer, help evacuate her roughly 300-pound potbellied pig?

“He is very heavy and very big so it’s not an easy task,” she wrote.

The problem — named Oliver — was a rotund 9-year-old boar covered in coarse bristles. Ms. Bennett, the founder of the kitchenware brand Hedley & Bennett, got him as 15-pound piglet in 2016; he has enjoyed snoozing and nibbling on peaches and strawberries ever since.

When the flames approached her home in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday night, Ms. Bennett and her husband, Casey Caplowe, loaded their two young children into the car and drove them to Glendale, away from the blaze. It was going to be much more difficult to relocate their unwieldy pet, whose weight Mr. Caplowe estimated to be closer to 200 pounds.

“That was among the top priorities,” Mr. Caplowe said: “How do we get Oliver out of there?”

Tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate by wildfires that have swept through the Los Angeles area since Tuesday, claiming lives, destroying landmarks and razing residential areas. The fires have also imperiled animals, as owners flee to lodging that cannot always accommodate pets.

Animal shelters in the area are stretched thin by hundreds of dogs and cats dropped off by evacuees. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Kevin McManus, the public relations manager for Pasadena Humane, a shelter that took in more than 180 animals in less than 24 hours.

It is especially difficult to find emergency lodging for large animals like horses and, say, pigs weighing hundreds of pounds. Some of the shelters recommended by the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services stipulated that they could only accept small animals. Pasadena Humane was already overflowing with large dogs, and has been seeking fosters who can take them in temporarily to free up space.

Mr. Caplowe, a founder of the media company Good Worldwide, looked into bringing Oliver to the nearby Rose Bowl Stadium, but heard that it was not accepting animals. Then Ms. Bennett posted on Instagram. “She put the blast up there, and people started to call and say, ‘Hey, happy to help,’” Mr. Caplowe said.

They learned that the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank still had space for large animals. Patty Rodriguez, a radio producer who has mutual friends with Ms. Bennett, offered to lend a pickup truck for transport.

Under a sky dark with smoke, Mr. Caplowe used pig feed to coax Oliver out of the backyard. With the help of Ms. Rodriguez’s husband, he hoisted Oliver’s hooves, and then the rest of his body, into the vehicle.

“He doesn’t like being moved or bossed around at all,” Mr. Caplowe said.

Oliver quickly became a minor celebrity at the equestrian center, where Mr. Caplowe said he appeared to be the only pig among stables of horses. He sniffed around his wooden pen and was fawned over by volunteers. The door to his pen was labeled with a piece of blue tape with a heart scribbled next to his name.

Mr. Caplowe and Ms. Bennett do not know when they will be able to return home with Oliver; they had to evacuate again on Wednesday evening as the fires crept closer to Glendale. Ms. Bennett told her Instagram followers that day that her mother’s house in Altadena had burned down.

“Our family and community are devastated,” she wrote.

In a separate post, she shared her relief that Oliver had been safely relocated. Hundreds of commenters who had never met the couple thanked her for the shred of good news.