LAKE VIEW TERRACE — One by one they tumbled out, squealing and wriggling from the grasps of SPCA and Humane Society agents. One boar, named "Jaws," was so big and wild that he had to be moved with a rolling cage onto a waiting truck.

In all, 38 Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs of all sizes and colors, from dingy pink to dirty gray, were herded out of Phyllis Frisbey's dusty, weed-covered home and hauled away by animal welfare officers Thursday morning.

After an anonymous caller squealed on her to an animal cruelty hot line operated by the SPCA, Los Angeles County Health Department officers checked out the manure-filled, single-story house and declared it unfit for pigs to live in, said Madeline Bernstein, executive director of the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Frisbey was not cited for any criminal offense but will be if she continues to shelter pigs at the house without securing a special permit, Bernstein said.

She said it is illegal to possess the pigs in the city of Los Angeles without such a permit, which limits the number of pigs depending on the space available. They are allowed as pets in some other cities however, including Burbank.

Frisbey--whose van sports a bumper sticker that reads: "Men are not pigs--pigs are gentle and intelligent"--said she took in unwanted pigs in her role as head of an organization devoted to saving the animals.

But the pigs were endangered by overcrowding, the accumulation of manure and the overgrowth of their hooves and tusks, Bernstein said. SPCA veterinarian Chris Cauble said the pigs slept in doghouses but had free run of the house, including the bedroom and living room, which he said stank and were littered with food.

Ranging in size from 30 to more than 100 pounds, they ate from feeding bowls spread throughout the house and the back yard, Cauble said. The front driveway of the house was filled with boxes of decaying fruit.

Humane Society and SPCA officials said that although Frisbey had good intentions, her home--which they said she also shares with three cats, four dogs and an Amazon parrot--just wasn't large enough to handle so many pigs.

"People think that it's cute to have these pigs inside their homes," Bernstein said. "But these pigs can be very aggressive and need more space and water to survive."

But a defiant Frisbey, co-chairwoman of the Los Angeles Pot Belly Pig Rescue Assn., said she will not change her ways.