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A piglet left behind by its herd finds a new family with some cattle

A wild boar named Frieda runs between two cows on Thursday in a pasture near the river Weser in Holzminden, Germany. The herd has gained an unlikely following after adopting the lone wild boar piglet.
Julian Stratenschulte
/
dpa via AP
A wild boar named Frieda runs between two cows on Thursday in a pasture near the river Weser in Holzminden, Germany. The herd has gained an unlikely following after adopting the lone wild boar piglet.

Wild boars have a reputation for destruction, but German farmer Friedrich Stapel told a news agency that he can't bear to chase away the piglet, which he's named Frieda. It'll winter with his mother cows.

BERLIN — A cow herd in Germany has gained an unlikely following, after adopting a lone wild boar piglet.

Farmer Friedrich Stapel told the dpa news agency that he spotted the piglet among the herd in the central German community of Brevoerde about three weeks ago. It had likely lost its group when they crossed a nearby river.

Wild boar "Frida" eats next to a cow on a pasture near the river Weser in the district of Holzminden, Germany, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. A cow herd in Germany has gained an unlikely following, after adopting a lone wild boar piglet. Farmer Friedrich Stapel told the dpa news agency that he spotted the piglet among the herd in the central German community of Brevoerd about three weeks ago. It had likely lost its group when they crossed a nearby river.
Julian Stratenschulte
/
dpa via AP
Wild boar "Frida" eats next to a cow on a pasture near the river Weser in the district of Holzminden, Germany, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022.


Stapel said while he knows what extensive damage wild boars can cause, he can't bring himself to chase the animal away, dpa reported Thursday.

The local hunter has been told not to shoot the piglet — nicknamed Frieda — and in winter Stapel plans to put it in the shed with the mother cows.

"To leave it alone now would be unfair," he told dpa.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: September 29, 2022 at 9:00 PM PDT
The captions in an earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Frieda the piglet.
The Associated Press
[Copyright 2024 NPR]