Farmer Determined to Have Been Eaten By His Own Hogs After Dentures Found in Pen

"...it's so doggone weird..."

When an Oregon man went out to feed his hogs last week in the morning, he never returned. Hours later, a family member went looking for him and found his dentures among other parts of his body in the pen.

Authorities are now looking into how 69-year-old Terry Garner came to be eaten by his own animals last Wednesday on his farm near the Oregon coast, Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier said, according to The Register-Guard. Most of his remains had been consumed, Frasier said Monday.

There is speculation, according to Fraiser, that Garner could have experienced a medical issue or fell over into the pen with some of the animals weighing 700 pounds and was then killed and eaten. Fraiser said that Garner had been bitten at least once by one of the hogs before. Foul play is not being ruled out as a possibility either due to the unusual nature of the case.

"For all we know, it was a horrific accident, but it's so doggone weird that we have to look at all possibilities," Frasier told The Register-Guard.

A pathologist was unable to identify a cause or manner of death, the newspaper reported. The remains will be examined by a forensic anthropologist at the University of Oregon.

KCBY reported from the farm itself and warns of the graphic nature of the story topic and also the footage due to animal carcasses seen on the property for "an unknown reason":

Garner was described by his brother Michael, 75, as "a good-hearted guy" who cared for several huge adult sows and a boar named Teddy.

"Those animals were his life," Michael Garner said to The Register-Guard. "He had all kinds of birds, and turkeys that ran all over the place. Everybody knew him."

Michael Garner said one of the large sows bit his brother last year when he accidentally stepped on a piglet.

"He said he was going to kill it, but when I asked him about it later, he said he had changed his mind," the brother said.

Domestic hogs are not typically known to be as aggressive as their feral cousins, but "there is some degree of danger associated with any animal," John Killefer, who heads the Animal and Rangeland Sciences Department at Oregon State University in Corvallis, told the newspaper.

While pigs "are more omnivorous than other farm animals, (such as) cows," Killefer called the case highly unusual.