The Other White Meat

I saw this rather fascinating news item last week:

KAAAWA, Hawaii -- It is a fish tale that is easy to scoff as a more of a tall tale. Three friends landed some fish off Kahana Bay on Thursday and a 40-pound feral pig that was swimming near their boat.

As the small fishing boat headed for shore at Kahana Bay, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, on closer inspection, the catch of the day was not seafood. It was pork.

"We just hooked up with a fish. As soon as we got it off, I looked over and Aaron was, I thought he was yelling 'fish, fish!' When I looked to my right, it was 'pig, pig!' There was a pig just swimming straight out to sea," fisherman Tyson Pualoa said.

"It looked like it was tired, like it was swimming all night or something. It was pretty much fatigued, ready to go down. We just threw a lasso over his head and yanked him on the boat," fisherman Lenny Mercurio said.

The fishermen said the 40-pound feral pig seemed relieved to be rescued, but the crew tied her up for the ride home to keep her from nipping at them.

No one knows for sure how long the pig was swimming or how she got nearly a mile off shore.

"With all the rains we've been having out here, the pig probably got washed out or something. It was swimming straight out to sea. That was the funny thing about it," fisherman Aaron Phillips said.

Once back on dry land, the fishermen practiced the "catch and release" method. They untied the pig and it took off running back into the forest.

Catch and release? Foolish mortals. That's a good eating fish.