I love a good mystery. I do not like to be scared, but if you have some clues and a problem to solve, I'm your man. I was a big fan of Encyclopedia Brown books when I was a young reader. Encyclopedia Brown was a kid detective whose dad was a policeman in their little town. Dad would bring home the really tough cases for his son to solve over dinner and "he would always solve them before dessert." While Dad was describing it to his son, the reader, me, would follow along and try to figure it out with him. Then, when he figured it out the story would end with Encyclopedia saying something like, "I know who dismembered that family...and you should too you bumbling oaf of a Keystone Cop!" (Ok, so it was never a murder and he was always respectful...can't a guy have a little fun?) Following the announcement that Encyclopedia had figured it out the story would end with a question..."Do you know who stole the elephant?" And then the faithful reader, after formulating their guesses, would turn to the back of the book, find the title of the story, and see if you picked up enough clues to know whodunit. Maybe that is why my favorite TV show is MONK. I miss that show. But I digress...
Well dear readers, I have a mystery for you today. But I am not going to make you guess. I'll just tell you. I will also include the answer in this post and not make you go to the end of the internet to find it. Come to think of it, I see no similarity between what I am going to tell you and Encyclopedia Brown at all. If you would like to print out this blog you may use it as a "get right to the point" coupon for future use. Stop laughing, it could happen.
Our mystery begins in the northernmost kitchen of Garrett Manor...my boyhood home. We wintered at the manor and I have many fond memories in that place. Well, actually, we springed, summered, and falled at the manor...and the northernmost kitchen was also the southernmost, if you catch my drift. (Aren't you sad you didn't use your get to the point coupon today? Our kitchen was at the front of the house and our living room made an "L" so you could not see into it from certain places. Our house had also been plagued by a few creepy little things. We were the home to every stray swarm of bees in Fremont. It wasn't like we had a huge tree or anything that they would attach themselves to. They would go into bushes, the ground, a pile of firewood, a cardboard box...we had bees around quite a lot. A swarm had even made its home in the eave of our house right off of the kitchen window and over time had gotten into the walls and would occasionally work themselves into the house by squeezing behind the electrical plate cover. (I hate bees) We also had the plague of the modern household, roof rats. They had luckily remained out of the living spaces but did manage to find things in the garage to gnaw on. (I hate bees...rats startle me when they scurry out from behind things but I hate bees) The final creepy little thing we had was a cruel babysitter. She used to "entertain" us while our parents were away by telling us ghost stories...about our own house!
Skip ahead to a typical summer Saturday morning and me doing my usual activity, watching Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy on channel 44. It had all the criteria I needed. It was funny. It had something to be solved. And, it showed me pictures out of a glowing box. I was content. And then, from the kitchen, came this otherworldly sound. It sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. I just heard it once though. I probably imagined it. I had been told that I had a vivid imagination. Go figure. No problem. Ha ha ha...Costello, you are so funny! Then I heard it again! This time there was no mistaking it. Something was happening in the kitchen.
I got up, turned the knob on the TV to turn the volume down (yes, I am that old) and froze in my tracks. I couldn't see into the kitchen and nobody else was home...or out at this wing of the mansion. And here I was, a youngster who didn't like the creatures that were already in the house and afraid of the creatures that my vivid imagination, aided by our babysitter, had conjured up. What to do, what to do. The sound continued in the kitchen and was happening more frequently now. It's hard to describe but if you took a water balloon and filled it too full with grape jelly and then let it out a little at a time, that might come close. It was definitely wet, it was definitely real, and it was definitely in our kitchen. I, of course, did not go charging in to see what it was. The mystery could have lasted about 8 seconds from the time that I turned off the volume to solving but my hesitance decided to drag it out a while. I imagined the bees finally getting organized and oozing through the switch plate in droves waiting until they had enough inside to make that giant floating arrow that would point at me before they attacked. (I watched a lot of cartoons too) I thought it might be a rat, sickened by the poison that we had put out and in the final throes of a horrible death on the floor. I thought about any number of creatures that, according to our sadistic babysitter, had inhabited our house without our knowledge for years.
And then the sound slowed down. It didn't stop but it was definitely slowing. I gathered all of my courage, I inched toward the doorway, I peeked around...and nothing. I could see nothing. Now I was on the case. Nothing was there to harm me. Nothing was there to jump out at me. No floating, buzzing arrows Not even a floating, buzzing question mark. Now I gotta know. I walked toward the corner and heard it again. I started moving things off of the counter and finally came to the culprit. It wasn't what I expected at all.
WHAT DID JEFF FIND?
Sorry, couldn't resist. When I pulled away the two or three things that hid the noisemaker I saw something that I had never seen before. There, in the corner, on the counter, was a forgotten cantaloupe, or cucumis melo (latin). Apparently if you forget a cantaloupe, on the counter, for longer than its shelf life, in the summer, it will ferment on the inside and eventually start to push its pulpy fruit and seeds out of what I like to call the bellybutton of the melon. It does this for quite some time and it makes the most peculiar sound when it is doing it. I was so glad to find out that the house was not haunted, but to this day I cannot eat anything that has melon in it. Enjoy your fruit salads this summer!
No comments:
Post a Comment