100kg boar takes a stroll along the highway

Owner finally sweet-talks his 100kg pet into following him back home "Jao Lek" on the elevated highway in Pathum Thani on Monday. (Photo: ปทุมธานี นิวส์ Pathum Thani News) A 100-kilogramme "wild boar" let out of its pen for a walk instead wandered off onto a nearby elevated highway, startling motorists and disrupting traffic on Monday. His owner took more than an hour to sweet-talk him into returning home.Pathum Thani police received several calls from people reporting seeing a big boar, or moo ba, roaming the elevated road at the Santi Suk intersection heading towards Rangsit. A police team went to investigate, accompanied by Poh Teck Tung Foundation volunteers and disaster prevention officials. They reported finding a big boar, about two-and-a-half years old and an estimated 100kg, wandering back and forth along the elevated road among the heavy traffic. They tried to catch the animal and remove it from the road. The volume of passing traffic foiled their efforts, frightening the boar, causing it to panic and repeatedly dash away from those trying to restrain it. The situation changed when its 64-year-old owner, Supachai, arrived at the scene and called out its name, Jao Lek. On hearing his voice, the pig gradually came to a stop and appeared to calm down. Supachai then spent more than an hour talking to and coaxing the boar before it finally agreed to follow him down from the elevated road. It then followed its owner's calls all the way home, more than 2 kilometres away. Supachai said he had let Jao Lek out of his enclosure on Thursday, as he normally did, to allow it to roam. When he went to put the animal back in its pen, he discovered it had disappeared. He had searched for the boar every day since, following up reports of it being spotted here or there, but had repeatedly missed it. On Monday, he received a call saying that traffic police and rescuers were attempting to catch a wild boar on the elevated road at the Santi Suk intersection. He rushed immediately to the scene and saw it was his missing porker. Local residents also took to the comments section on social meda to say they had seen the boar wandering around the area at night in recent days, and they wondered where the unexpected visitor had come from. Jao Lek is now safely back in his pen