AMBER ALERT - Piggy is Missing

The absolute worst, the absolute unthinkable has happened:

Piggy is missing.

While on a trip to the Franklin Institute this morning, Margot dropped her beloved Piggy somewhere between our house and the museum, and her sitter didn't notice at the time.
(I was at the DMV, which was another tragedy, although one from which I've already recovered.)

Since it's only a six block walk to the museum along the same street from our house, I've searched again and again. I checked every storefront, asked every passerby, and questioned the hot dog cart vendors. I even asked those who appear to live on the sidewalk permanently, but no one has seen him.

Why would anyone take Piggy? He's far from new, too grubby to regift to someone, and so ratty only his true owner could love him. But it's clear that he's gone - although I made a last ditch effort to find him with a Craigslist posting under lost and found.

And Margot is a wreck. We walked 20th Street again this afternoon and she knew exactly why we were walking that route without me saying a word about Piggy. "Baba," she whispered plaintively a few times, and the rest of the time she just sat silent. When we came back to the front door she waved to the sidewalk and said "bye bye." I'll never know if she was really talking to Piggy or just closing the event (the way she does when we exit a room sometimes) but it was the saddest moment I've had in a long long time.

So it appears our perfect sleeper is a thing of the past, but maybe, in time, Alternate Piggy will be allowed to fill the role of his ill-fated brother.