Farm animals - pigs, cows, geese - found pleasant pasturage in the parks, streets, empty lots, and front yards of Capitol Hill until about 1880. In his lecture Wetzel will describe the exciting days when the police and later the District pound crew battled local residents to get these largish - but to their owners valuable - nuisances off public property, including the Capitol grounds. One newspaper reported: She "rescued her porker from a lightweight policeman" and then "not content with this tossed both officer and pig into the muddy sty."
