LISTENERS GO HOG WILD OVER WOMAN'S CALLING.

Byline: Allan Turner Houston Chronicle

It's 5 a.m., and the rosy fingers of dawn are snug in the ebony glove of a country night. Here and there, a light glows from a farmhouse window. Somewhere in the distance, an engine coughs to life.

The farm animals begin to stir, the roosters consider crowing. Then, out of the vast darkness cloaking rural Lamb County comes the nasal shriek: ``Soo-ey! Here hawg! Here Hawg! Onk-onk-gree-onk!''

Roxanne Ward - the world's twice-crowned hog-calling champion - is awake and on the job.

``If the wind is not blowing, you can hear me for five miles,'' she boasted. ``If the wind is blowing, you can hear me for two miles - depending on where you are. But with a microphone, I'm totally awesome.''

Since February 1995, when she first won top honors in the Weatherford, Okla., world championship, the 40-year-old Littlefield secretary's life has been transformed. The daughter of an itinerant farm worker, Ward now rubs shoulders with the rich, famous and glamorous.

Barefoot, attired in overalls and straw hat, a red ribbon tied on her toe for good luck, she has appeared on ``Good Morning America'' and nationally syndicated television talk shows.

She and her husband, Joe, an auto mechanic, have taken their first airplane trips. Their TV hosts have rolled out Hollywood's reddest carpet: limos, $600-a-night hotel rooms with maids who turn down your bed, hot tubs, photos with the stars.

Ward is the host of her own video, ``Learn to Call Hogs with Roxanne Ward,'' and has cut a not-yet-released record, ``The Night of the Cajun Hog Trot.''

Wherever she goes - from Littlefield's only Mexican restaurant to a jet airliner at 32,000 feet to a hospital gurney awaiting surgery - Ward is beseeched to cut loose with a gut-tingling hog call.

Such dizzying celebrity might overwhelm the less well-grounded.

But Ward, who has known her share of hardship, has remained hog humble.

Today, just as they have for 15 years, Ward and her family live in a tiny brown and white farmhouse just off FM 1075 midway between Anton and Littlefield.

The house is filled to bursting with pig art - photographs, ceramic figurines, drawings, knitted samplers, pig-shape mirrors - and Ward herself is bedecked with pig jewelry. Her clothing often features pig designs.

``The only article of clothing I don't have pigs on is my bra,'' she said. ``I just haven't been able to find a pig bra yet.''

Outside, a yard full of dogs is dominated by the head hog - in fact, the only hog - in residence: Farnsworth Burgess Ward, a 4-1/2-year-old, Oreo-eating, pot-bellied pig whose fat hangs like saddlebags off his sides and rump.