Pig Flees Sausage Factory; Escapades Win Nation's Heart

OTTAWA - Canadians are cranky these days, peeved at politicians and exasperated with bureaucrats.

And for a little while they had a symbol of their unrest in Francis the runaway pig.

The tale starts last July, when Francis broke out of a slaughterhouse in Red Deer, located on the high plains of central Alberta. He jumped a yard-high fence, tiptoed through the sausage factory and pushed open a back door with his snout.

The butcher gave chase but lost him. Francis found plenty to eat and places to hide in a big park.

He was all right as long as it was warm. Named for the gentle St. Francis of Assisi, Francis could take care of himself. He was once seen fighting off coyotes. They ran with their tails between their legs.

The pig was well known around Red Deer, but he wasn't a national hero until fall, when it began to grow cold on the high northern plains. Folks worried about how Francis would survive the savage winter, and they set out to capture him.

It was easier said than done.

Francis had learned to avoid human beings, and he'd grown lean and powerful. Trackers sometimes sighted him but couldn't get close enough to shoot him with tranquilizer darts.

At last, Al Marshall, who had been trying for six weeks to capture Francis to save his life, surprised the pig in his bed of straw and grass.

Francis headed for open country like an express train. Marshall managed to sink a tranquilizer dart in him. But the drug wasn't strong enough to stop the pig. Francis ran for miles and disappeared in the bush.

That's when Francis became nationally famous. A Francis fund was started to provide the pig with a comfortable home for the rest of his life. School children bombarded Red Deer authorities and the butcher who, in theory at least, still owned Francis, with letters demanding the pig's life be spared if he were recaptured.

The butcher washed his hands of the whole affair. He wasn't in the business of turning Canadian national heroes into pork chops.

A save-Francis group was started in Winnipeg. Concerned telephone calls came from as far away as Florida.

Red Deer city officials decided decided to house Francis in the park where he had made his home. They planned signs at the city approaches: Welcome to Red Deer, Home of Francis the Pig.

But things were growing chancy. The temperature had dropped below freezing, and heavy snow fell.

The trackers made one more effort. In a hog-wild five-hour chase they managed to corral Francis and get three tranquilizer darts in him. The good news went out across Canada that the nation's most famous pig was safe and well.

Or at least he seemed well at first. Then Francis died.

At first it was thought he was over-stressed by the chase needed to capture him. But an autopsy disclosed he died of peritonitis, because one of the tranquilizer darts had pierced his intestine.

``Strange a twist of fate as it might seem,'' said Larry Frischke, a philosophical veterinarian, ``the administration of an agent to capture and save him was what caused his demise.''

Marshall, the 58-year-old big-game hunting guide who captured Francis, having taken up the chase voluntarily out of concern for the pig's survival, was full of admiration.

``He would have chewed your leg off right up to the last minute,'' he said. ``For determination in an animal, I've never seen anything like it.''

Psychologists were called in to explain the human reaction to Francis.

One of them, Paul Sussman of Edmonton, compared Francis to Jesse James or Pretty Boy Floyd.

``It's the same thing,'' Sussman said. ``Francis was on death row, and he beat it.''