Falcon Heene sparked a national nightmare — then slept right through it.
For two harrowing, gut-wrenching hours, spellbound Americans watched as an out-of-control silver balloon careened over northern Colorado, and they feared the worst — that the 6-year-old boy was trapped inside.
But all the while, Falcon was hiding in the rafters of the Heenes’ garage — scared because his dad had yelled at him for trying to get into the homemade, saucer-shaped contraption while his family was preparing a test launch.
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He played with his toys — and then he took a nap.
“He scared me because he yelled at me. That’s why I went in the attic,” the rambunctious Falcon told an army of relieved rescuers, cops and media gathered at his Fort Collins, Colo., home after he was found.
It was a happy ending to a nightmarish, nail-biting search that began when the balloon finally deflated and gently landed in an open field 50 miles away.
Falcon’s dad, Richard Heene, 44, an amateur scientist and storm chaser, said he filled the balloon with helium for the first time and he and wife Muyumi, 43, and sons Bradford, 10, and Ryo, 7, counted down. The boys were off from school because of a parent-teacher conference day.
During an interview on CNN last night, Falcon said he could hear his family calling for him.
“Why didn’t you come out?” his dad asked.
“You said we did this for a show,” Falcon replied, fueling speculation that the entire incident had been a hoax.
Asked to clarify what his son said, Richard Heene became frustrated and didn’t press his son to say more.
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On NBC’s “Today” show this morning, Henne was again asked to explain his son’s bizarre answer.
“First of all, let’s clarity that he’s six and I really don’t know if he understood the question,” he said.
Henne said his son was recounting how a reporter asked him to climb back into the attic and show how he did it.
Oddly, Falcon vomited during his appearance, while Heene tried to play it off like nothing happened.
“I’m starting to get ticked off … I’m not selling anything. I have nothing to gain,” he said.
Local authorities have said they do not believe the disappearance was faked.
The balloon was attached to tethers, and when the main tether was released, it was supposed to hover 20-feet above the ground.
That didn’t happen.
Heene told The Post the tethers weren’t securely fastened to the ground, and when the main tether was released, the balloon broke free.
“It took off,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to take off.”
Heene, meanwhile, had lost track of Falcon.
“I yelled at him because he was trying to get into the balloon. I told him to stay the heck out,” the dad recalled. “So much stuff was going on, I didn’t realize Falcon wasn’t there.”
His son Bradford believed the younger boy was in the gondola attached to the bottom of the balloon. As the contraption soared away, Heene said, “I could feel Brad hitting me on the side trying to tell me something: Falcon is in the flying saucer. That’s when I realized Falcon might actually be in the flying saucer.”
Everyone freaked out.
So began the great “saucer” chase, with cops, firefighters and National Guard personnel mobilized to figure out how to bring Falcon down safely.
Meanwhile, millions all over the world were glued to their TV sets and computer screens.
Heene — who, with his wife and three wild boys, appeared on the ABC reality show “Wife Swap” — said he was “really sorry” he had yelled at Falcon.
And he bristled when asked whether the incident was a publicity stunt, calling such a question “horrible after the crap we just went through!”
Still, investigators haven’t completely ruled out that Bradford and Ryo pranked the adults.
“You are talking about a 6-year-boy. I don’t think he could have come up with this on his end,” Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said when asked if it had all been a hoax.
Heene groused that it wouldn’t do much good to even punish the little boy.
“If I scold him with a loud voice, he pouts and walks away on his own,” he said. “We don’t ground our children.”
It was an extraordinary end to the day of riveting live television — and nerve-wracking worry about a lost little boy.
The homemade dirigible, constructed of plywood, cardboard and Mylar-coated foil, traveled 50 miles south at the mercy of the winds, reaching an altitude of 8,000 feet. As the 5-by-20-foot balloon gently dropped into a field south of Denver International Airport, the nation held its collective breath waiting for Falcon to emerge.
It never happened.
“There is no child in the balloon,” emotional 9News cameraman Brian Willie announced live on TV.
Horrific theories circulated that Falcon might have fallen out of the balloon or that the gondola had become detached in mid-flight. But in the middle of telling reporters outside the Heene family home that a massive ground search was about to begin, Sheriff Alderden was pulled aside by an aide.
“Our investigator on the scene said they found him in the attic in the garage,” Alderden announced. “We were just in the process of deploying the search team.”
“””‘”””Ryo told The Post he spent the afternoon crying.
And Bradford stuck to his story at a hastily assembled press conference in the evening.
“I thought I saw him,” he said.
Adding to the mystery, neighbor Bob Licko, 65, told reporters he heard a commotion in the back yard and saw Falcon’s brothers on their roof with cameras.
“One of the boys yelled to me that his brother was way up in the air,” Licko said.
Richard, however, said the family was on the roof together filming the balloon for one of their home movies.
Stunned neighbor Marc Friedland said the Heene boys are like members of his own family, and he called Falcon a “well-adjusted, fun-loving boy.”
He said of the family, “They’re unusual, yes, of course. [Richard is] sort of a scientist-slash-inventor. They’re storm chasers — they go after tornadoes, hurricanes, things like that,” Friedland said. “That’s their lifestyle.”
Falcon was already a nationally known troublemaker.
“F- – – this rule!” he told his “new mom,” Karen Martell — a home-safety expert — last year on “Wife Swap” when she laid down some family edicts.