Nine frightened sows burst out of a truck and wandered around the Hubeishan tunnel on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway, stopping the traffic for about five hours Tuesday.

Five sows were chewing leaves on the roadside casually and four others lay squealing while vehicles were waiting in a long queue at the tunnel near the Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport.

The driver said his truck carrying nearly 100 sows to Foshan was moving slowly when a coach driver behind him blew his horn loudly, frightening the sows who threw themselves at the rear gates of the truck. The lock was destroyed and nine sows escaped at 3:30 PM causing a serious traffic jam.

Emergency workers and some kindhearted drivers help drive the nine sows to the roadside to let traffic flow resume half an hour later but the flow was still slow.

A 15-ton crane was sent to hoist the sows back to the truck one by one with two 5-meter-long ropes.

The traffic returned to normal at 8:15 PM.

(Shenzhen Daily June 9, 2005)