Was it an accident or an elaborate escape plot?
Around 2,000 piglets made a run for it on Monday evening after the truck that was transporting them crashed and overturned on a highway near Xenia, Ohio.
The truck had been carrying about 2,200 pigs, but several hundred were killed in the accident and some will have to be euthanized, according to local media. The piglets had been en route from South Carolina to Indiana, where they were to be raised and then slaughtered, according to WCPO.
Video from the scene shows police, firefighters, park workers, farmers and volunteers working into the night to catch the piglets, who escaped into a wooded area along the highway.
"They're in the woods, so I don't think we'll ever get all of them -- I really really don't," Xenia Township fire chief Dean Fox told WCPO. "We'll try as hard as we can to retrieve all of them, but we probably won't retrieve them all."
"The help from local farmers meant a lot," Fox said. "If we didn't have the farmers here with their livestock trailers, there'd be pigs every place still."
The captured piglets are being transported to the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia where they are being given water, FOX19 Now reports.
Some piglets remained in the truck even after the accident:
Officials told The Associated Press that the driver of the semi lost control and hit a guardrail on U.S. 35 West. One of two people inside the truck was treated for minor injuries.
The driver will be cited for failure to control a motor vehicle, the Dayton Daily News reported.
Police are asking local residents to keep an eye out for piglets and call authorities should any be spotted. WDTN reports that officials are concerned that loose piglets could become prey for the area's coyotes.