The hundreds of folks gathered at East Riverside’s Buzz Mill coffeehouse collectively exhaled “aww” as Sunday’s pig pageant got underway.

Harriett, a 5-year-old, 150-pound pot-bellied pig, sauntered onto the stage with her mind firmly fixed on the carrots that cajoled her to perform her tricks — a hoof to hand-shake, sitting and twirling.

And as the seven heavy-hoofed pageant contestants graced the stage, the crowd learned of their idiosyncrasies — Harriet’s cheeks always smell of maple syrup, Gumbo can get bad sunburns without proper sunscreen, and Otis James deals with terrible carsickness.

It was all part of Central Texas Pig Rescue’s first porcine pageant, a fundraising event coming days ahead of Amplify Austin, the city’s annual day of online giving. The pig rescue group was looking to reach a $20,000 benchmark to fund an on-site medical clinic to serve its roughly 250 porkers.

Despite the wall-to-wall sea of onlookers, the rescue group came up short of its goal. A total of $4,000 was collected over the three-hour pageant.

“We want to showcase their natural beauty,” said Tracey Stabile, who coordinates events and fundraising for the group. “Pigs are very smart; they function well in homes; they have families. It’s really to show this other side of pigs — their compassionate side. ... We’re celebrating them for things like being chubby and being round.”

Princess Hammie Spammie — or Hamlet for short — was a standout in the field of contestants. Instead of carrots, Hamlet’s temptation was Cheerios, and she vacuumed them up as she was led to center stage, tail wagging.

Hamlet is a special pig, said her owner, Barbara Dunnam. She's a rescue animal who, in her short 18-month life, has already alerted her family to a fire in the laundry room last November. She is also trained to alert Dunnam when her husband, who has an inoperable brain tumor, is on the verge of having a seizure.

“She was only 3 or 4 months old, and in the middle of the night, she just started screaming,” Dunnam said. “I didn’t know what was going on, then I look over and my husband was about to have a seizure. You could see him vibrating.”

According to Dunnam, Hamlet can sense the certain salt humans emit when they’re about to have a seizure.

On Sunday, Hamlet soaked up the attention lavished upon her by her many new fans. While some of the other contestants grew shy in the presence of the enthusiastic crowd, Hamlet reveled in the attention.

Pigs “have a wide range of emotions, just like humans,” Dunnam said. “Some are introverts; some are extroverts. She is very much an extrovert.”

Anyone wanting to donate to Central Texas Pig Rescue can visit centraltexaspigs.org/donate.