Time of Trouble for a Boy and His Piglet

Hilda Hanegan speculates that the mud smudges on the wall next to the backyard gate indicate an escape route.

Her daughter thinks that the gap at the bottom of the chain-link fence was just big enough for the 20-pound animal to have squeezed through.

But a Tuesday afternoon request for pig food at a Tustin pet store could be the critical clue in the case of Alex Hanegan’s missing black piglet.

Early Sunday morning, 3-year-old Alex of Santa Ana awoke to find that the 8-week-old pig that his grandfather had loaned him for nursery school show-and-tell had escaped from the Hanegan backyard.

So Alex and his aunt posted a number of hand-lettered signs near their Wright Street home, pleading, “Please bring my piggy back.”

Bearded, Unkempt Man

Monday there were no solid leads, only one crank caller who phoned the family, burped and said, “Yeah, we ate your pig.”

The search seemed futile.

But on Tuesday, shortly after 1:30 p.m., Tina Nashick, owner of Tustin Pet Village, had a “most unusual request” for pig food.

“People who own pigs know that you don’t get pig food in a pet shop. You get it at a feed store. I’ve been here 17 years, and I’ve never had a request for pig food,” Nashick said. Nashick said the man who made the request was bearded and unkempt and spoke in broken English. He was accompanied by a woman and a child.

Nashick said that she asked the man where he got the pig but that “he was rather vague. He said the pig had been given to him. But the description sounded like the one that’s missing.”

“I would have kept him nailed in the crate and in the bathroom or something, if I thought this would happen,” Alex’s grandmother Hilda Hanegan said Wednesday.

Prays for Return

“He prays at night for Jesus to bring his pig back, and every day he says, ‘Mama, lets go look for my piggy some more,’ ” Hanegan said.

County animal control officials say they have not picked up the pig and no sightings have been reported. And some fear Alex’s piglet may be in a real stew.

“I figure somebody ripped it off,” said Alex’s aunt, Diana Hanegan, 23. “It got out, and someone saw it, and split with the pig.”

“It’s true,” sighed the boy’s grandmother, who watches Alex during the day, “if they know how to raise it and butcher it, there’s plenty of meat there.”

Alex was napping Wednesday afternoon and was not available for comment.