Pot-bellied pig Wilbur Sardo now has more than 3300 friends on Facebook, a Twitter feed, a growing YouTube channel, and an online petition with more than 500 supporting signatures, but still only 17 days left before he’ll have to find a new home outside The Thicket at Cypresswood subdivision in Spring. Owner Missy Sardo says she was told at an HOA meeting and over the phone last week that she could keep her household pet if she got 51 percent of residents to sign a petition in the pig’s favor. But a certified letter Sardo received over the weekend indicates that the neighborhood’s board of directors has decided that its “initial decision [to banish the pig] will stand.” The neighborhood’s deed restrictions prohibit “animals, livestock, poultry, reptiles, or insects of any kind.” Household pets, defined as “domestic animals commonly and traditionally kept in homes as pets” are allowed, as long as they do not include “any wild, semi-wild, or semi-domesticated animal.”
- Spring family fighting to keep pet pig says HOA won’t budge, despite petition [KHOU]
- Save Wilbur Sardo
- Deed Restrictions excerpt (PDF) [Save Wilbur Sardo]
- Wilbur Sardo [Facebook]
- Previously on Swamplot: Some Pig
Video: Wilbur Sardo
God help the kid who catches a lizard in the backyard there.
Pigs are not semi-domesticated. They are highly domesticated for thousands of years. The argument could be the pig was livestock, but if it came from a pet pig breeder (the kind that breeds teacup pigs and the like) that argument falls away. The 51% petition can’t change HOA rules, but a better clarification of the rules would probably acknowledge this is a pet pig, not a livestock pig. If this is an FFA project that was purchased at a livestock fair, though, then the HOA probably will have an easy time kicking it out. The owners probably should have checked the charter before getting the pig though.
(couldn’t resist…)
Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.
In their sties with all their backing
They don’t care what goes on around
In their eyes there’s something lacking
What they need’s a damn good whacking.
Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.
i think i called this on the previous article…
Pigs are livestock. Period.
Perfect example of why I will never buy a house where there is a HOA.
Screw HOAs.
At some point, I’d like to be a pig owner. The way I figure is that it can either turn out great and I have a nice pet for a long time or it won’t work out and I’ll eat it. Win win.
Time for the Sardo family to start house hunting in the country