PRINCETON, W.Va. — The phone was ringing off the hook at the Mercer County Animal Shelter Friday morning. Callers were wanting to know if the shelter had any piglets left from Thursday afternoon’s crash on Interstate 77, shelter assistant director Stacey Harman told MetroNews.
Harman had to tell the callers all of the small pigs had been given away.
“We started spraying them down (Thursday afternoon at the shelter) and within an hour we had people coming from all over and they were gone,” she said.
The shelter briefly housed 60 of 2,300 piglets involved in the accident about six miles north of the state line between Bluefield and Princeton. The driver lost control of the truck to avoid hitting another truck. The rig went into the median.
Harman said several hundred of the animals died in the crash or shortly afterward from overheating.
“When we get there–there are pigs squealing everywhere. People started handing them out of the little portal holes in the trailer,” she said.
Many were taken from the scene by area residents who heard about the wreck.
“They were very cute. They were very squealey—and cut up from the accident,” Harman said.
The pigs were on their way to a breeding or feeding farm to get ready for market.
It’s not the first time Harman and crew have been called to the interstate to help.
“Last year in this same exact location there was a tractor trailer that wrecked with cows,” she said. “Fortunately they were able to get another truck.”