Diamond seizure: pig gobbles up precious stone

A pig has found itself out in the cold this week after troughing down the diamond centrepiece from a £1,500 wedding ring.

Mrs Moon, from Sowerby, North Yorkshire, put her hand into the pig’s pen at Easingwold Maize Maze, North Yorkshire to pet the 10 week-old Kune Kune piglet when it clamped its pork chops around her hand. She quickly pulled away, escaping without injury but minus the £1,000 diamond.

Speaking to the BBC, Mrs. Moon said:

“The pig came towards the fence and I put my hand through and it just clasped its teeth round the ring and for a while I was tugging and I couldn’t get my hand away.”

“When I did my hand was filthy and I wiped my hand and realised that it had taken the stone out of the centre of the ring.”

Mrs. Moon was visiting the attraction, which is also home to goats, sheep, fluffy rabbits, guinea pigs and ducklings, with her husband Les, 63, and grandchildren Josh and Emilia, aged four and 20 months.

For those who suspect insurance fraud, Mrs. Moon had this to say:

“Quite a crowd gathered round after it had happened. One woman said she would be a witness if the insurance company thought I was talking porkies. But the ring has a lot of sentimental value to me.”

But Mrs. Moon may have had a lucky escape. Pigs have extremely powerful jaws, and while they rarely bite, they are perfectly capable of cutting through bone. While naturally vegetarian, pigs have been known to chomp through fellow farmyard creatures that happen to wander into their pen.

This is not the first time a four-legged fiend has made off with a valued possession. Last year, a family in Apex, North Carolina had their savings snapped up by the family dog after they left $400 in note sitting on the dressing table. A colander and hose were the makeshift tools that helped recover $160 in note fragments over the following days.

Farmer Paul Caygill, who runs the visitor attraction near York now has the unenviable task of sorting through the pig’s droppings in the hope of a finding Mrs. Moon’s diamond in the (t)rough.

He told BBC News he had not had any luck as yet, but had enlisted visitors’ help in his search through the slop:

“I have got the children on it as well so hopefully we’ll find it at some point.”

What amount of money would get you delving through dung? Have your say.