First, I have to say that in my defense, yes I know Halloween is over, but I drew this comic on Sunday which was, in every technical sense, every literal sense, still Halloween. (We got trick-or-treaters again, and I got Dave to watch Beetlejuice for what was apparently the first time. How you got through childhood in our shared era without having various scenes from Beetlejuice indelibly inked onto your consciousness I do not know, but that’s all fixed now.)
Second, in additional Halloween news, our jack-o-lanterns were smashed last night, and now we are left with a mystery. I don’t really care that they’re gone— Dave’s was already melting in the heat—but I do care in a purely academic way whether it was mischievous kids (probable) or javelinas (possible!).
The factors, presented in no particular order: javelinas like pumpkins, and will definitely eat them off your porch. Jerk kids definitely exist. It’s kind of too warm still for the javelinas to come down this low. Paul was super interested in the scent profile of the crime scene. I found what may be a javelina print in the gravel, but could also be just a smudged area of gravel from almost anything. The pumpkins were just below our bedroom window and we didn’t hear anything, which seems like a vote for javelinas, because are Youths ever Quiet while doing Mischief?
The world may never know! But it does remind me that Paul and I were once surrounded by a pack of javelinas while on a morning walk in this neighborhood, so what we have here is a rich stew of possibility. We also saw a stray dog out and about this morning, which is irrelevant except in the way that it feels thematically related as a thing-which-hazards-my-dog-on-walks. Did this dog smash our pumpkins? No. But is it a reminder from the universe that javelinas exist (dog hazards) and thus an indication that those same javelinas smashed our pumpkins?
It could be! You can’t prove a negative!
Anyway, that’s it for today. My garden is sprouting up a storm. The weather is here, mild eighties as a high; I am wearing a sweater because it’s probably still low seventies now. Fall wildlife is creeping back into the area. The sky is blue, it is a burning beautiful blue and it will be all day long.