23 February 2006

The Phantom Apple Eater of Old Kings Heath

(alternatively titled ‘How do you like them apples?’)

Call in the redoubtable Corner of the Yard, Scooby Doo and the Famous Five. Something strange is afoot on the street where we live and there’s a mystery to solve.

For a long time now I have noticed the inexplicable appearance of clusters of apple cores on the path outside our house. Sometimes, because I am so ridiculously fanatical about composting I have been known to pick them up and scuttle through the house to the kitchen out to the back garden and pop ‘em in the compost bin. I’ve also spotted little piles of munched apples further up and further down the street. But I’ve never seen anyone standing around eating an apple anywhere nearby. Frankly, I’m intrigued. Who stands on a suburban street in one spot for the time it takes to eat three or four apples? And why?

I suppose it could be teenagers. But a group of adolescents hanging around on our street and chomping apples as opposed to say, drinking alcopops or smoking seems unlikely. Perhaps that’s a cynical view, but I think it would be very rare to find a group of young people that regularly stands around eating fruit together.

Perhaps it’s a private detective trying to cut down on the doughnuts who is surveiling someone in a house nearby (me perhaps?). But if that’s so then it must be a very lengthy case, because the first time I spotted them there apples was over a year ago.

Maybe Kings Heath has its very own guerilla gardener, a Johnny Appleseed character who is trying to bring a little greenery into our lives. Except that there are already plenty of trees here and the cores are always thrown on the paths.

Actually, I think I need Gil Grissom and some systematic, scientific enquiry into the whole business. He could dust for prints, take a sample for DNA analysis and make a mould of the tooth impressions on the core.

…

I bet it would still turn out to be those pesky meddling kids.

Filed under: Mulch — Clare @ 8:04 pm