Pies prove wandering pig’s undoing End of era as library CDs sold off
One little piggy that went to market - or at least to Vogeltown - is now heading to a new home after a liking for mince pies brought its freedom to an end.
The wandering little black sow became an unofficial resident of the New Plymouth suburb after somehow getting loose, and residents’ charity had saved its bacon for several months.
And it was a liking for good food that brought ‘The Penny Lane Pig’ back into the fold and to a new home on a Stratford farm.
‘‘Animal Control officers had help from members of the public who managed to tempt it, by all accounts, with mince pies, and they managed to get it into the cage,’’ New Plymouth District Council (NPDC) compliance lead Cheryl McGrath said.
The pig had been seen on several occasions by residents over the past few months, and NPDC animal control officers had been working to catch it alive.
The pig had been seen at rugby training at the Old Boys’ training ground, running across Brooklands Rd, sunbathing in a backyard and making a mess of Penny Lane residents’ gardens. A petition had even been started calling for the pig to be left alone.
The council’s animal control officers finally managed to capture the pig early on Friday morning.
McGrath said that, from what she understood from talking to people, the sow was being fed so it had become quite friendly.
‘‘One of the members of the public that’s been involved with the pig, he’s taken it to a farm. There are other pigs on this farm.’’
McGrath said the process was pretty straightforward.
‘‘Our fear was that it would get hurt at some stage,’’ she said.
And she said the pig is not going to be turned into pork and bacon. ‘‘We’re just pleased that it’s safe and that it’s going somewhere where it will have a lovely life.’’
- Christina Persico The changing sound of music was evident when New Plymouth’s Puke Ariki library sold off its full collection of 700 Compact Discs (CDs), writes Christina Persico.
They were withdrawn from circulation earlier this month after library bosses decided they were not getting enough use.
The number of annual issues had dropped from 2498 four years ago to 559 in 2016 as the popularity of internet streaming services took hold.
On Saturday the albums were lined up in boxes on the ground floor and sold for $2 each, with a limit of five per customer. There was everything from Coldplay and Mariah Carey to Mozart.
And there were plenty of people on hand to snap up a bargain. One New Plymouth library patron, who would give her name only as Cheryle, said she wasn’t a fan of digital streaming.
‘‘No, I like CDs better. You get to choose what you want to listen to.’’
Another patron, Emma, said she never used CDs at home anymore and did not have a CD player in the house.
‘‘I’ve just bought some for the car because I can’t be bothered connecting my phone,’’ she said.
‘‘There’s still something nicer about having CDs rather than having digital. I think for cars they still are good.’’
Andrea Willy said it was a tricky issue.
‘‘I think it’s sad for the artists that we don’t listen to the whole CD anymore. Sometimes your favourite songs on an album aren’t the ones they choose to release.
‘‘But it is really convenient to just load songs on a playlist at the same time.’’
Many libraries around the country still list a CD collection on their websites, including Auckland, Tauranga, Nelson, Dunedin and Christchurch.
Wellington Library still has around 51,000 CD issues a year.