Roadie

Brian wants a badger.

It will be named Roadie, it will live in our back yard, and we will feed it pumpkins, because that is what badgers eat, apparently. Furthermore, it will be mostly purple and will not be like your typical badger in disposition… or maybe I’m a badgerphobe? Maybe to say you're being "badgered" is just as unjust as saying something is "so gay"? Either way, I’ve been assured this one will be well mannered and gentile.

So we are in the market for a badger.

To this end, we bought a pumpkin a couple weeks ago (not for lack of trying to grow one). This pumpkin was placed in our garden, at Brian’s direction, in order to lure the creature, and the fruit sat there for many days without event.

Now, though, it has disappeared, vanished. Only the dry stem was laying there in the garden, just as though it was the inedible bit of a purple badger’s snack. This, of course, caused some gaping smiles because, really, not even Brian thought that would happen. He was pretending just for fun, like pretending we were in the Star Wars universe, but instead of light sabers we get badger pets.

I am a scientist and am, of course, purple badger agnostic--some neighbor kid probably went to pick up the mushy thing, the stem pulled off, and he ditched the rest of the evidence--but Brian says he thinks he may have heard Roadie in the trees the night after the pumpkin disappeared.

I think I like Brian’s hypothesis better; too bad it doesn't work that way :-).