the great pumpkin heist

children beware - there's a pumpkin thief on the loose. apparently a farm in exeter (a.k.a. the boons outside of london) was recently the victim of a pumpkin heist. according to the police and the farmer, it looks like it was a professional job.

um... are there professional pumpkin thieves?

okay, okay, this is actually serious. it was 5,000 pumpkins. the thief stands to make a pretty penny if he/she were to sell each at $5-$10 a head (pun intended). and as the farmer tells it, pumpkins have been scarce this year. but it's just so ridiculous that this is headline news. not murders, not drugs, but pumpkin thievery. oh, my bad -- professional pumpkin thievery.

my guess is that this is more than a one-man job. pumpkins are heavy. and they can't just sell them all at once, or it would be suspicious. it'll be like canal street in new york - they'll come up to you mumbling while you're walking down the street, "pumpkins, big pumpkins, great for carving, i'll sell them to you cheap" and then you'll have to go to some dingy parking lot where they'll have the pumpkins in the back of a van.

i bet there's a lot of pumpkin envy around here. like, who has the biggest pumpkin, who carved it the best, most innovative or some shit like that. my coworker's husband carves about 4 pumkins at halloween. her mother carves about twenty. seriously, who has the time or inclination to carve 20 pumpkins if not to make the neighbours feel inadequate?

when i lived in toronto, i was one of the people who turned out the lights to avoid kids coming begging for candy. then i had to hide in the bushes when i wanted to have a smoke, lest i be spotted by an errant trick-or-treater.

anyway, if you see a pumpkin rolling down the street, it has probably escaped and is making its way back to the farm. it probably has valuable information about where the other pumpkins are being stashed too. do what you must.

always,
sbg