Pig survives 36 days in rubble on coal

From Today • Tuesday • June 24, 2008

 

BEIJING — A pig survived for 36 days buried beneath rubble in quake-hit southwest China on a diet of charcoal — and the animal has been hailed as a symbol of the will to stay alive, Chinese media reported yesterday.

 

The pig weighed nearly 150kg at the time of the earthquake on May 12, but had lost two-thirds of its weight when found last week, the Chongqing Evening Post said.

 

“It didn’t look like a pig at all when it was saved. It was as thin as a goat!” a witness told Xinhua news agency.

 

According to reports, the pig survived on water and a bag of charcoal that had been buried with the one-year-old in the ruins of Pengzhou city, Sichuan province.

 

Although charcoal has no nutritional value, it is not toxic either and it filled the pig up, it said.

 

The curator of a local museum has already bought the pig for 3,008 yuan ($600) and will keep the animal for the rest of its life “as a living symbol of the earthquake disaster”, the report said.

 

The museum named the pig “Zhu Jianqiang”, or “Strong Pig”.

 

Owner Wan Xingming had given up the animal for dead, but when he heard that soldiers were going to clean up the rubble around his house last Tuesday, he rushed back to warn them that the dead pig could be infectious.

 

That was when the skinny porker was pulled out of the rubble. — AFP