Bridget Bardot Pleads for Mercy For Maurice The Domesticated Wild Boar

Story By: Ernest Bio BogoreSub-EditorJoseph Golder, Agency:  Newsflash

Bridget Bardot has appealed for authorities to spare the life of a wild boar being kept as a pet by a family after they found it wandering in their garden five years ago was a baby.

@SauvezMaurice/Newsflash

However, from being a cute piglet he has now grown up into a huge wild pig. The family have erected a special enclosure for their pet in Correze, a regional ‘department’ in Southwestern France, and insist that he is safe and domesticated.

But keeping wild animals as pets in France is illegal, and after an anonymous tip-off local officials located the boar, and announced that they planned to euthanise it as it was illegal to keep it as a pet.

A legal challenge by the family has so far stayed off the execution but the family have now been given a date in April of next year for a hearing to finally decide what’s to happen with the animal.

Newsflash

The case divided public opinion after Maurice’ host family created a Facebook page “Save Maurice” and launched a petition that collected more than 160,000 signatures.

Even Brigitte Bardot has become involved and defended Maurice publicly last spring.

Bardot wrote in an open letter: “My Foundation does not aim to support the keeping of wild animals by private individuals, on the contrary.

Newsflash

“Here, however, it is too late to rehabilitate this animal in the wild and we must intervene to find a humane and satisfactory solution for everyone.”

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