Jo-Ann Johnston, The Tampa Tribune

Everybody who raises a livestock project for the Pasco County Fair learns that providing your animal with good nutrition is important.

Still, the fair entrants who raise hogs finds that pigs don’t only want what comes from the feed store.

“Pigs east trash and metal and sticks and cardboard and plastic bags, feed bags - anything,” says Brittany Green, who is 15 and raised Wilber at the Zephyrhills High School farm.

In raising Wilber for the fair this year, Brittany had a little misadventure that should make the record books:

Wilber is not the culprit in this tale, however. That would be Bugs. Bugs belongs to Brittany’s friend and fellow ag student, Nickie Harrison, an 18-year-old senior.

Bugs caused quite a ruckus one day before Christmas when Brittany, who happens to be hard of hearing, was in the barn with some friends and her mom. Brittany recalls she was standing near Bugs’ pen.

“I was talking to a guy friend, and we were just having fun and he gave me a hug, and my hearing aid – the box- caught his shirt and it popped off.”

Oops. Everybody scrambled to look for the tiny box, which normally belongs just behind Brittany’s left ear.

“We couldn’t find it. We thought it fell into a puddle of water, we looked in there and it couldn’t find it. And then we heard Nickie’s pig coughing, and then all of a sudden we hear something drop. We just saw it on the ground. And then the pig went after it again, but we snatched it before he could get it.”

Brittany cleaned up the aid, but it didn’t work. She and her mom are working with their insurance company to try to get replacement, and in the meantime, she has been wearing a loaner.

Meanwhile, Bugs and Wilber have grown up just fine. Both animals were accepted Thursday into the Pasco County Fair hog sale. They’ll be going to the higgest bidder Saturday night.