Help: This Little Shit Done Stole My Pumpkins!
So I wander over to my pumpkin patch to see how they’re growing, and one of ’em has been torn right off the vine. I got me a missing pumpkin on my hands!
I head over to my neighbors, the Teagles, to see what they know. Ol’ Screamy Teagle opens up the door (he’s the one that can’t stop how loud he is) and he says “WE SEEN THAT PUMPKIN THIEF, ALRIGHT! NANNY, COME ON OVER, SHOW DOC THAT PICTURE!”
Nanny Teagle shuffles over with a photo of what looks like a tiny Bavarian bandit. Nanny done caught him trespassing, stealing a bunch of their apples and grapes. She whips out her trusty Polaroid to get proof, and the smarmy little bastard stops and grins while she snaps away, posing for her dadgum evidence! Then he giggles and scampers away pulling his swag-wagon, quick as a bunny on fire.
“WE CAN’T LET THIS TRANSPIRE AGAIN, LET’S SET SOME TRAPS,” says Screamy. So we lay down a bunch of snares in their orchard, and in my patch.
I sit up all night by my pumpkins, with a thermos of Nanny’s caffeine-laced moonshine that keeps me relaxed but alert, ’cause I can’t afford no burglaries. If I lose any more, then ain’t no chance of having the Barton Elementary School Jack-O-Lantern Contest this year, and I’m of no mind to let them kids down.
But, just past midnight, I see that lederhosen-clad larcenist jumping around my patch and avoiding all my snares! He moves like one of them acrobats, all nimble and cartwheeling, grabbing up my goddamn pumpkins. He tosses ’em in that weird wagon and takes off faster than a mare on methamphetamines, when I hear from next door “ALL OUR APPLES AND GRAPES DONE GOT PILFERED! CURSE YOU, CREEPY GERMAN KLEPTOMANIAC!”
I chase him, but with my rebuilt knees that don’t last long. I breathe real heavy and think to myself, “He must be some escaped Austrian circus freak, baking pies outta our labors of love, chanting ‘Gooble Gobble’ while he stuffs his jerkwad face and laughs at our misfortune.” Then I get real contemplative, thinking about all them second graders crying and slashing their knives through thin air, ’cause now there truly ain’t nothing to carve.
So me and the Teagles are forming a neighborhood watch, and we hereby offer a bounty on this little shit’s head. If y’all help land the pissant Prussian punk in juvie, you earn as much of Nanny’s special ‘shine as you can drink! And if you get a good chunk of our crops back too, I’ll throw in a shiny, gently used pumpkin.
Arm yourselves with some nets, tranquilizer guns, and good-ol’-fashioned TNT, ’cause nobody knows what that kid is capable of. He ain’t natural. Please help, if not for me, then to put smiles on the local children while they hack smiles in them jack-o-lanterns. Now get a move on, the sauerkraut sucker is out there, and we got some sleuthin’ to do!
