By Leonardo Benassatto
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Rosangela dos Santos Lara went to market and bought a little piggie as a pet, but then it grew and grew and grew.
Now aged three, Lilica the sow weighs in at 550 pounds (250kg) and gets through five kilos of fruit and vegetables a day plus animal feed, eating away much of Rosangela’s tight household budget.
She says the seller tricked her, but Lilica still sleeps on a mattress in the bedroom that the 50-year-old teacher shares with her husband Nelson, an unemployed fisherman in the Brazilian coastal town of Peruibe near Sao Paulo city.
“I bought her thinking she would be a mini-pig, but she turned into a giant animal,” Rosangela said, while tickling Lilica, stretched out in front of the family sofa with cats and dogs clambering around her.
“She came to bring me joy. People call me crazy, but I just love animals”
Selling Lilica for meat would give her family’s finances a major boost, but Rosangela isn’t interested.
“Someone offered me 20,000 reais ($3,600) this week for her for slaughter, but she is not for sale.”
(Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto, writing by Anthony Boadle; editing by John Stonestreet)
