SAN JOSE, Calif. - It has been raining cats and dogs here for two days, and people here are glad. Maybe this means it will finally stop raining pigs.

"The hope is that the pigs will head back to the hills," said Lindsey Wolf, who lives in California Maison, a condominium development at the south end of town.

"Now that we have rain, people are waiting it out and hoping for the best."

For the past few months, the condominiums and nearby neighborhoods have been under siege by marauding wild pigs.

Hungry and thirsty pigs that walk miles for a meal. Huge pigs that outweigh many of the people who live here. Abundant bands of pigs that enjoy nothing more than gouging the succulent lawns and, when stuffed, making more pigs.

"The grass is torn up 100 feet from my front door," Wolf said. "There is a big gravel area to the side, but they are not interested in that at all. They go right for the lawn."

San Jose is not your average pig town.

The capital of Silicon Valley, it has an international airport, a convention center and a new downtown development, Santana Row, which opened the other day with a Gucci store and apartments that are reported to rent for as much as $15,000 a month.

Nearly everyone who cares about the city's reputation is fed up with pig talk.

"It is not something we will answer questions about," said a spokeswoman for Compass Management Group, property managers for California Maison.

But San Jose is also one of those cities that look and act something like amoebas, taking new shapes and consuming almost everything in their way.

The city and its suburbs in Santa Clara County have crept toward the ranches and scruffy slopes to the east, territory that state wildlife officials say was staked out long ago by the pigs.

"The wild pigs are worse this year than in the past, but the problem is common," said Lt. Dave Fox, a warden with the State Department of Fish and Game.

"There are subdivisions and homes where there used to be farms and ranches. Santa Clara County happens to be the hot spot.

"Next year it will be somewhere else."

No one can say for sure, but it is believed the incursion of the pigs into San Jose is due in part to the unusually dry summer and fall. Before last week's storms, the last recorded rainfall in San Jose was May 21.

The dryness apparently bothered oak trees, which dropped fewer acorns, normally an autumn staple for the pigs.

Most people in San Jose are counting on the heavens for pig relief.

By late yesterday, the skies had responded nicely with more than an inch of rain, with an equally dismal forecast until today.

"Once there is something to eat somewhere else, hopefully they will go," Wolf said.

"I guess we will find out in a few weeks."