“I came outside one morning and there was a mangled jack-o’-lantern on the porch with pieces of it trailing down the sidewalk,” Amanda Quick, Carlton’s mom, told The Dodo. “Carlton was back in the yard, but the evidence was clear. He had made a break for it and had eaten the face off of someone’s carved pumpkin!”
After that first taste, the clever pig couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into as many pumpkins as he could find, which meant Quick needed to keep a close watch or he’d disappear to investigate the neighborhood.
“It didn’t matter what I tried, changing locks, changing the leash,” Quick said. “He was going to find a way to get out and get people’s pumpkins.”
Quick offered his sincere apologies to the wrongdoers. Luckily, neighbors seemed amused by the determined pig’s pumpkin-centric appetite and offered him, even more, to chow down on.
“The neighbors were incredibly kind about it,” Quick said. “Eventually, [they]Carlton was invited to their home to eat the pumpkins. They would even leave pumpkins on my porch overnight for Carlton to find when he woke up the next day.”
Quick knew Carlton couldn’t eat that many pumpkins, so she donated the extras to Central Texas Pig RescueCarlton and she first met in this place. But don’t worry — he still has plenty to gorge. The rescue pig has other ideas to keep him entertained.
“He is always looking for something to get into and then immediately checking to see if I noticed,” Quick said. “He’s the reason the phrase ‘hamming it up exists. He always has a little twinkle in his eye from all the mischief.”
When the happy-go-lucky pig isn’t stealing pumpkins, he’s burying the seeds all over Quick’s front yard, which became an accidental pumpkin patch. The hardest part is keeping the pumpkin-loving pig from eating them before they’re ready.
“I have to section off parts of the yard from him so that some of the pumpkins can mature,” Quick said. “Otherwise, he eats them all as soon as they fruit, and we would never get any big ones! His pumpkin patch has actually taken over our next-door neighbors’ yard as well, but they don’t seem to mind.”
Now Carlton has all the pumpkins he could ever want — no stealing required.
