Woodside's porcine pal of passersby passes on Woodside's porcine pal of passersby passes on (November 23, 2005)

By David Boyce

Almanac Staff Writer

Every story must end, and the end came Saturday, November 5, for Wilbur, the 200-pound pig who lived in the yard just west of the Woodside fire station and whose one true love was a horse. Wilbur was 13, or maybe 14.

It might have been something he ate, said Shirley Ewen Bayerle, his owner and the keeper of the yard where Wilbur lived for most of his life. He would come when called, tail wagging, and passing school kids would feed him apples and carrots.

He ate kibble mostly, and sometimes homemade stew, but a recent free meal of french fries and bones might have killed him, she said.

In Wilbur's honor, his friends and acquaintances held an Irish wake. "The whole town knows him," Shirley noted.

The friendship had time to grow. Wilbur, named after the pig in E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web," came to Woodside in 1992 when he was 8 months old. A Half Moon Bay man who had to move entrusted Wilbur and a female pig to Shirley's care, she said. The man came back for the female but never returned for Wilbur, so he stayed.

"Once you talk to something, you don't want to eat him, so I was stuck," she said.

Shirley boards horses, and a young filly named Char, who arrived a few weeks later, stole Wilbur's heart. They would eat from the same feed pile and take walks together, she said. And because pot-belly pigs "are very dog-like," she added, Wilbur would try to satisfy his urges on "any part of Char that he could get to."

Char moved on after two years, and Wilbur became pals with other horses over time, she said.

Shirley said she has no plans to acquire another pig.

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