GETTYSBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — This is a serious story. No, really. Stop laughing.

So serious that Chelsea Rumbaugh got teary-eyed talking about her missing pig, whom she had taken home two weeks ago and bonded with quickly — but who went missing by the next morning, before two of her four children could even meet him.

She knows not everyone takes this story — about a missing pig named Kevin Bacon — as seriously as she does.

And she’s fine with that. More than fine.

“The humor helps me,” Rumbaugh said. “And so it’s great.”

Greater still would be if this Kevin Bacon would come home, which he was the closest ever to doing, according to Rumbaugh, while abc27 was in her yard Friday.

“He kept looking up and seeing me. But every time previous he would just run when he saw a person,” Rumbaugh said. “Anytime we have a positive interaction and he walks away instead of running away, that’s good. In our book, that means he still feels safe here.”

Positive interactions and feeling safe at Rumbaugh’s home go beyond pigs — yes, plural; she and her husband Mike have three other piglets, among 17 animals in all at their rural home.

“Our goal is to one day have a pig sanctuary where we can offer therapy sessions or even just visits for children and adults who are struggling with PTSD or any kind of neurodivergence,” Rumbaugh said.

But their shorter-term goal is to bring home the bacon through a combination of affection — like the kind evident in the close encounter Friday between Rumbaugh and Bacon — and a redesigned enclosure with a trap.

Rumbaugh and her family aren’t animal novices. Still, did they get more than they bargained for when they saw the pig’s former owner list a Juliana Pig — a breed often marketed as “miniature” — list him for sale for $50, before they went to see him and saw his size but fell in love with him anyway?

“To say we were not prepared for a 200-pound pig to get loose — yeah, that that would be dead on,” Rumbaugh said.

Kevin Bacon’s former owner named him. Rumbaugh hadn’t gotten around to deciding whether to change the name before he escaped, and now that he’s famous, she definitely won’t change it. Anyway, she said, the name fits well in a home where the other piglets have names like “Two Hock” and “Salt and Porker.”

How does the other Kevin Bacon feel about being arguably — around here, for now, anyway — only the second-most-famous Kevin Bacon behind a runaway pig?

A message to Bacon seeking comment, via his publicist, went unanswered Friday.