Geralyn Beauchamp, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Geralyn Beauchamp
Pumpkins, Police Reports, Bed Times and Unsolved Mysteries! 11/14/2008 6:59:13 PM
As an author, I am amazed at how the human brain works when it comes to creativity. I've edited for years, given pointers and been privledged to read and review works by authors famous and not so famous. But occasionally you get handed a piece that is absolutely delightful. And maybe the author won't be so well known down the road, but then again, one never knows.
Given to me by twelve year old Josiah Lundstrom, and put through the rigors of edit and review, this piece is a classic! Enjoy. Comments to the author of this piece are welcome. But as he has to go to bed at nine, he might not get to read them until tomorrow!
Pumpkin Patch Police Report #643
A Robber's Story.
Court Reporter: Tammy Tomato
As told in court to Judge Jeremiah Jamba Juice
Prosecutor Pomegranate: Tell us exactly what happened the night of the crime, will you?
Defendant: As the alarm rang, forty pumpkins rammed the door just before security came crashing in on us with their tranquilizer guns. I of course was lifting the jewels from the armory. That, after all, was my part of the "job" we were pulling which also put me furthest from the chaos. But things still didn't bode well for me.
In my flight from the armory I tripped and hurt my leaf! Wounded, I had to act fast and so rammed the barricade of guards standing between me and my escape! After taking care of them, I slunk down the hall into a break room and saw three pumpkin guards milling about and thought to myself, "hee hee heeee …"(a common term used by we pumpkins about to pull a fast one) walked up behind them and yelled, "Freeze Ninja Robber!" We Pumpkins have a serious joking problem. I just couldn't help myself! It runs in my family genes! Is that court reporter writing this all down?
Prosecutor Pomegranate: Get on with the story!
Defendant: Oh, yes of course. At first they were startled but suddenly I had to duck, the whooshing sounds of their darts just above my head, as they turned on me. I quickly looked around and saw that their darts had landed in a coffee mug and were sticking out of their coffee pot. Good thing it was a metal coffee pot as I'd hate to think of losing a nice carafe …anyway, I quickly grabbed the mug and used it to deflect the next set of darts fired at me. How can a pumpkin protect him self from darts with a mere mug you ask? Mathmatics too complicated to go into at this moment, so on with my story! Besides, I got a C on my last math test.
So I grabbed the tranq gun from the guard who was more interested in having me stop using his coffee mug to defend myself with, (a split second fair trade among pumpkins) and said to them all, nighty night! I then blew out of that pumpkin patch with the jewels, (OK, so maybe I rolled just a little) and a hand held tranq gun with my last four darts. I ran outside the patch to the outer wall with the only door to freedom and immediately noticed four pumpkins.
Four darts, four pumpkins. Think of it.
Prosecutor Pomegranate: And, AND?
Defendant: They put up a good fight but as soon as I could I ran out the security door and to freedom! The first thing I saw on the other side of the wall surrounding the patch was some psycho guard dragging another pumpkin away. I don't think he was from our gang which meant I was the first pumpkin out! What should I do? Of course! I knew what I would do! I ran to the jewelry store and sold the jewels!
Prosecutor Pomegranate: Then what did you do?
Defendant: I got rich.
Prosecutor Pomegranate: Besides that?!
Defendant: And then twenty years later after living as high a life a pumpkin can live. Errr ahhh, you might not want to ask what all that involves … I realized I needed a friend! But all my friends were back at the pumpkin patch! At least I hoped they were back at the pumpkin patch and didn't become am item on a Starbucks menu! Could that have been my friend Eddie in that Pumpkin Spice Frappaccino? Ohhhh I shudder to think! So I did the only logical thing. I bought the pumpkin patch!
Anxious to be reunited with my friends I rushed through the security door and then through the main gate only to run right smack into a rather Abraham Lincoln looking sort of fellow. Imagine, a pumpkin that looks like Abraham Lincoln! And just as I exclaimed, "What the …"an old guard waltzed through the gate, took one look at me and yelled, "YOU!" His squinty little pumpkin eyes got even squintier as he yelled, "You're the one that tranq'd me twenty years ago and almost broke my favorite coffee mug!
Uh oh, I thought to myself. Just like that fateful night of the heist, I knew this wasn't going to bode well.
"And you nearly killed me with a poisoned dart!" The old pumpkin guard screamed as he began to rush at me.
Suddenly, to my amazement, a cop car pulled into the patch and stopped with a screech of tires and a cloud of dust. The Sheriff, a rather lanky built Acorn Squash, jumped out of the car and yelled "You're under arrest!"
Was he talking to me or the old pumpkin guard rushing at me? It was then all chaos broke loose. Not to mention a few other unidentified vegetables. What with all the dust the cop car created when it pulled up it was hard to tell at that point what was what. But as the dust acted like a smoke screen, I quickly used it to disappear. Things after that get a bit sketchy.
The only record of that day was found by a traveling Cucumber. A piece of a diary about a guy nobody had seen for 37 years. The diary was old, dirty and hard to read, so see if you can figure it out. It read: Nobody seen him for another 37 years at his sons grave even though his wife took care of him the cops came as the robber was crying they shot at him he grabbed a dagger and ran and stabbed the sheriff. (now that had to hurt, my words inserted) At his age he was too slow to get away from the other cop, (probably another one of those funny looking acorn squashy guy cops, my words inserted) and so he got sleepy and then fainted and when he woke up he was in the patch.
Prosecutor Pomegrante:That makes no sense!
Defendant: Er, ahh … Now I was told by an eye witness what happened after that as they came on the scene just as the old guard woke up. He moaned, got up, and just walked to the pumpkin patch gate and knocked on it and the thing fell down. He said, "Dang that's old!" just as the door landed in the dust. It was then, when the dust began to clear that he also noticed the family, the human family, standing there looking right at him and pointing! Gulp!
"We want him!" Their children cried.
"Dang it!" the old pumpkin guard exclaimed as the children began to reach for him with their evil chubby little hands!
And so he died that day, joining a family and their household to become a decorative home piece. No one ever saw him or his jewels again.
Ah ha! You say, what jewels? And therein lies the question. Was it I, the robber who stole the jewels in the first place that was taken from the patch to forever grace the living room mantel of a human family? (They've found a way to bronze pumpkins. It's the newest craft craze in case you didn't know.) OR, was it the old pumpkin guard, and what would he be doing with any jewels? You figure it out. I have to go to Starbucks to picket against Pumpkin Spice lattes!
Pumpkin Patch Case 643 was thrown out of court due to a lack of evidence, and due to the fact that Judge Jeremiah Jamba Juice and the defendant had to go to bed. It was nine o'clock after all.
