Purloined porker charms Milford eatery patrons

MILFORD — Eating like a pig has become nothing short of acceptable when dining on the front porch of the Dimmick Inn and Steakhouse. Well, sort of. Certainly, the image has become popular at the East Harford Street restaurant, thanks to a robbery nearby at the Craft Show store. The stolen item is a life-size model of a pig, which was consequently placed on the Dimmick’s front steps about a month ago, as what employees thought to be a practical joke. While staff members investigated the true source of the plastic porker, dozens of hopeful “owners” called the restaurant, claiming the popular statue to be theirs, according to assistant manager Marc Coda. Inquiries to the borough police regarding an investigation of the statuary theft met with no response. By the time the restaurant determined the pig was shoplifted, it had quickly become a porch favorite, complete with its wide grin, cracked tail, and black shorts. The adornment, which stands in a place of greeting on the steps, generates daily photo ops, triple-takes from passing cars, and when all else fails, a topic of dinner conversation. Having become attached to the fake farm animal, the restaurant purchased the pig and gave it a new home, just at the opposite end of the block from its former. Both the Dimmick Inn employees and the hog’s extensive fan club can only hope that this subtle change of location, and perhaps the unsuspecting disguise of running shorts, will protect the pig from the fate of its former lawn-mate, a sidewalk-based cow statue, which met with a borough zoning lasso after a motorist’s complaint in July and has since been corralled inside the Craft Show’s picket fence. If worse comes to worse, pig supporters can always post warning signs on behalf of skittish tourists.