POKIN AROUND: St. Charles pig controversy touches on national issues
Some folks say they're tired of it. They say it's been blown out of proportion. That the City Council is wasting its time. That it's the fault of a liberal, swine-loving media.
I disagree. There are larger issues here that we, as a city and as a nation, must face. Illegal residency. Declining home values. And, trust me on this, premarital sex.It's gotten to the point that we have Councilman Erv Ermeling, Ward 10, refusing to give the names and locations of two more outlaw pigs in the city, making a total of three not-so-little pigs.
"I am not getting them in trouble," Ermeling told me Friday.
Ermeling's stance raises questions. Is he aiding and abetting those living here illegally? Are the illegal pigs taking jobs from legal pigs? Do we need to erect a fence around our fair city?
After meeting with Sarah, the pig, and her owners, Ermeling has tried to overturn the city's ban on potbellied pigs.
On one side of the debate is Warren Korth, 86, who made the initial anonymous complaint to the city about Sarah. He has since stepped into the public light to demand justice.
"What part of 'No' don't you understand?" Korth asks.
He wonders if Ermeling has been unduly smitten by Sarah.
"I think once he met that pig he fell in love with it," he says.
Ermeling was expected to introduce a new version of his bill during the council's Sept. 2 meeting. It would legalize ownership, but also would require potbellied-pig owners to register their pets with the city.
On the other side of the fence, literally, are pig-owners Christopher and Christina Jones, ages 27 and 29. Christopher is a recently laid-off sheet metal worker and Christina works as a lab technician. They bought Sarah in January not knowing they were breaking the law. Christina had always wanted a potbellied pig.
I interviewed Christopher at his home. When he called Sarah she waddled over, snout to the carpet, softly snorting.
She's housebroken, clean and gentle, Christopher says. "She doesn't stink; she doesn't bark; she doesn't bite."
Sarah weighs 80 to 90 pounds, he says, and with proper diet management should top out at no more than 120 pounds.
If the city decides to keep and enforce its current law, he says, he and his wife probably would place Sarah in a rescue shelter while they weigh their options, including whether to sell their home and leave the city.
Potbellied pigs are allowed in St. Charles County and St. Peters. A review of O'Fallon ordinances shows that potbellied pigs are not expressly forbidden, says city spokesman Tom Drabelle.
According to St. Charles law, Christopher says, residents can have four pets. In theory, he says, he could have four dogs rather than his household's current inventory: Sarah, age 1; George, a 15-month-old boxer; and a cat named Richard.
They also have two children: Anikca, 8, and Ethan, 15 months.
"By law I could go out and get a Great Dane, a bull mastiff," Christopher says. "I could go out and get a pit bull. But a potbellied pig I can't have."
Four barking dogs make a lot more noise than one dog and one pig, he adds.
Which brings us to George the dog and Sarah the pig.
Korth says that from his kitchen window he and his wife Dorothy, 84, have a direct view of the Joneses' backyard deck.
"What goes on is that the pig is a female and the dog is a male," Warren explains. "The pig gets in heat."
And George, well, is a guy.
From Warren's perspective: You live your life, serve your country in World War II, buy a home 34 years ago, raise a family, own and operate two A&W Root Beer restaurants, retire and then one day in your Golden Years you look out your kitchen window and there's George romantically involved with a pig.
"It's unsettling," he says.
Christopher Jones says the two animals often "wrestle"; he doesn't believe they have been intimate.
The Korths say they both grew up on farms and they know what they saw and it wasn't "wrestling."
Why not close the blinds?
"Do you close the blinds to your kitchen window?" Dorothy asks. In addition, she says, there are more appealing sites from that window that she would rather not forsake - a butterfly bush, as well as roses.
I ask Warren if it would matter if it were two dogs instead of a dog and an outlaw pig.
"I don't know," he says.
The bottom line, Warren says, is that the law is the law and his neighbor is breaking it. And he believes the pig's presence will lower the value of his home when it's time to downsize and sell in the next few years.
This is not a case of a long-standing feud. Both sides agree there was no ill will prior to Sarah.
Warren says that when the Joneses moved next door in April 2007 he brought them tomatoes from his garden.
Says Christopher Jones: "He told us how nice it was to see young families with children moving back into the neighborhood."
And now, says Christopher, the Korths won't even say hello. And one day, he says, he spotted Warren leaning over the fence to cut berries and take them home. The berries were from the Korths' bush. Sarah had been munching on them.
According to Ermeling, there was a time, early on, when there could have been a different route to resolution. In his view, Korth could have done the "neighborly" thing and directly expressed his concerns about Sarah to the Joneses, who would have been willing to consider building a privacy fence.
But at this point in the saga the pig has long since left the pen, so to speak.
