Crews from Georgia, Alabama and Florida helped remove 500 pigs in four days last August, but the swine are so numerous and scattered that officials had to reconvene and come up with a new plan they launched several weeks ago, said Gustavo Olivieri, Caribbean district assistant supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. “It was out of control,” he said of the hundreds of pigs concentrated in just one impoverished area in Puerto Rico’s capital. “We realized there were way more animals than we anticipated.” The problem started about five years ago after people began buying the pigs as pets without knowing they would grow to weigh 250 pounds or more. Olivieri said the pigs multiplied after Hurricane Maria struck in September 2017 as a powerful Category 4 storm because some escaped their confinement while others were set free by their families.