He dropped his tools as the teenage boys ran up the path to the house, all of them panting and wild-eyed. Though the tears had already dried, he saw that several of them had dirt-stained tracks on their faces. His boys weren't due to the house for another few hours. The herd was not with them.
The eldest looked straight into his eyes, "Father, the pigs are all dead." The father scanned the faces of his boys, "Predator? Thief?"
All boys spoke at once and he couldn't understand - shaking his open hands toward the mass of them, he yelled,"Tell me what happened!"
They explained that they had witnessed the crazy naked man run up to a group of men, and he skid to a stop on his knees in front of them. They had been warned many times to avoid this particular man because he was dangerous. Expecting the crazy man to attack the men, they instead watched in horror as all of the pigs ran past them, toward the men and hurled themselves into the sea.
The family retraced the path the boys had taken, all of them running. They were headed to the cliffs overlooking the Sea of Galilee. A large number of people had gathered and were either looking over the edge of the steep bank into the lake, yelling at a group of men, or were staring at a man sitting on a rock.
Both knees of the seated man were scraped up and actively bleeding. The father could see pebbles and dirt embedded in the wounds. The father nearly didn't recognize him, because every time he'd seen him before he had been naked and at a distance. He could see now that his wrists and ankles bore circumferential pink scars. His face, legs, and arms bore wounds in various stages of healing. The boys urged their father to the edge of the lake where he saw the waves lapping at the edges of the pile of pigs at the shoreline. How would he feed his family now? The financial loss was too much.
Terrified, his hands tightened into fists. He joined the others in insisting that the men must leave. As he stood there, he couldn't get a word in edge-wise with the group of men fielding questions and insults from the locals who had lost animals that day. He was edged out and found himself staring into the clear and soulful eyes of the once crazy man. The man tearfully apologized to the father and his boys for the loss and explained what had happened.
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Mark 5:1-20
Luke 8:26-33
Great story from an entirely different view point.