Austin Riley spent years on his family's ranch in the Texas Hill Country, caring for and spending time with animals. In 2017, when a piglet's mother died in childbirth, Riley immediately took over, bottle-feeding the newborn and letting him sleep inside the family home until the weather was warm enough to move the animal outside. He named him Waylon, and over the next few years, the two became best friends. That's why it came as a shock one October night in 2022 when a warthog – “an animal made to fight lions” – suddenly attacked Riley, almost killing him, the Riley family tells Peter Holley. Texas Monthly.
Reilly, who has cheated death several times already – had had several risky brain surgeries in childhood after the tumor was discovered; In his mid-twenties, a brain hemorrhage was nearly fatal, and he survived the brutal attack, but just barely. Waylon has never shown any signs of aggression; Sometimes he would sleep on Riley's chest, and Riley would spend hours in Waylon's pen or take him on car rides. Twenty minutes before the attack, Waylon greeted Riley as happily as ever upon entering the pen. After feeding a pot-bellied pig in a nearby barn and re-entering Waylon's barn, Riley suddenly finds the pot-bellied pig relentlessly approaching him. “I can't forget his eyes, the way they were locked to kill,” he says. It is a mystery to this day why Waylon – who was euthanized the next day – turned to violence. Read the full and moving story here. (More long stories.)
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