Who stole Flossie the BBQ pig? And a piece of Bluffton history?

Flossie came from Savannah.

From a Broughton Street antique store, if Ted Huffman’s memory serves him.

“‘I found the pig, I found Oscar’s pig!’” Huffman said Monday as he mimicked his wife. She’d found Flossie — who wasn’t yet named — for their friend, Oscar Frazier, who in early 2005 was opening a barbecue restaurant in Bluffton.

The pig was mounted on a concrete pedestal in front of the refurbished caboose that housed Oscar’s BBQ. The joint opened in February that year, Huffman said, about six months before Frazier died.

Liver cancer, a rare form of it, killed Bluffton’s poet laureate, mayor pro tem, and former town councilman. Huffman took over the restaurant a couple months later and renamed it. And when he relocated Bluffton BBQ to the Promenade in 2008, the pig came with him.

Now, Flossie is missing.

“I was kind of hoping it was a joke, like a mascot thing or whatever,” Huffman said. A Captain Woody’s employee told him he’d seen a couple of girls — who looked drunk — take the pig from its home in the outdoor courtyard, the seating area off to the side of the restaurant. It was around 1 a.m. Saturday, the man told Huffman. The girls stuffed Flossie in a car trunk.

Huffman hasn’t filed a police report. He might soon, he said, “just to have something on record.” Really, he just wants Flossie back. And he hopes the thieves realize they’ve taken something more valuable than a three-foot-tall, 30-pound fake pig.

This isn’t the first theft from Bluffton BBQ.

Stitch, the restaurant’s second mascot, went missing in December 2009. Huffman filed a police report on that occasion. He and his wife were living in the Promenade at that time and, as Christmas neared, he was surprised to find Stitch in the middle of the road near his restaurant.

Stitch’s tail had been broken off and a note stuck out of the hole.

“Merry Christmas,” the note said, “Here’s your damn pig back.”

Now, Stitch has a new tail, but she’s still missing a chunk of her left ear.

“She wears that scar proudly,” Huffman said, grinning.

On the wall near a corner of Huffman’s restaurant hangs Stitch’s picture. Above it is a picture of Flossie, perched on her pedestal out front of the caboose by the “Oscar’s BBQ” sign.

“It ended up in my lap,” Huffman said, remembering when he’d taken over the caboose after Frazier’s death. “That’s how I ended up in the barbecue business.”

He and Frazier didn’t trade barbecue secrets.

“Oscar had a different style from me,” Huffman said. “He was a sauce guy. I’m not. He was a mustard guy. I’m not.”

You can argue about barbecue, Huffman said, which is one of its endearing qualities. And it’s a cultural bridge-builder, he said, the way Frazier was between Bluffton’s black and white communities.

Barbecue is a food built on regional influences, he said, “which is the opposite of regional ignorance.”

Regional ignorance, he said, is dangerous. It happens when people come to a place and don’t take time to — or just don’t care to — learn about it. The theft of Flossie, he said, is an example.

The theft is more than a prank, he said, more than stealing someone’s personal property. It’s the theft of some of the history of Bluffton — a place, he explained, that’s trying to strike a balance between growing and preserving its roots.

“This is still a small town,” he said, hopeful folks will spread the word about Flossie’s legacy. “And people know people who know people who know people.”

Huffman doesn’t know how Flossie wound up in the antique store in Savannah.

He hopes she doesn’t end up in some college dorm room.

Where she’ll be little more than decoration.

This story was originally published June 27, 2016 at 4:36 PM with the headline "Who stole Flossie the BBQ pig? And a piece of Bluffton history?."