A short story by Sherry Roberts.
Every year Maureen purchased a small pumpkin, not too expensive and not too heavy, to display on her back patio—and every year someone stole it. This year, she decided, would be different. She planned to capture the culprit in the act with the new motion detecting light her granddaughter had installed above the patio door.
For several October nights, Maureen’s backyard remained quiet and dark. Then, one night the yard was flooded with light. Maureen rushed to the window and was shocked at what she saw.
Her neighbor’s St. Bernard, a dog Maureen had never trusted, was caught in the spotlight. Maureen opened the patio door and shouted, “Alfredo, what are you doing?”
Alfredo stared at her for a moment then calmly picked up the pumpkin by the stem with his teeth.
Maureen had never befriended Alfredo for various reasons: he shed, he drooled (copious amounts), and he probably weighed more than she did. Now she added another unwelcome assessment of his character. Alfredo was a pumpkin thief.
When Alfredo turned and headed across the backyard with her pumpkin, Maureen grabbed a flashlight and followed him. “Come back here with that pumpkin!” she shouted.
Alfredo ignored her.
Maureen couldn’t imagine where the dog was going. Beyond the woods that edged the backyard was just the river. Was he going to bury the pumpkin, drown it, or eat it? His teeth were certainly big enough to tear into the pumpkin. Maureen had seen videos of creatures at the zoo demolishing pumpkins. It was not a pretty sight.
When Alfredo reached the river, he stopped and looked back at her. The pumpkin gleamed with his slobber. Now recalling how much Alfredo slobbered, Maureen wasn’t sure she wanted the pumpkin back. Still, it was the principle of the thing. Theft was theft.
When Alfredo held the pumpkin over the water, she ordered in a stern voice, “Don’t you dare drop my pumpkin in the river.”
With one last look at Maureen, Alfredo opened his mouth and the gourd plopped into the dark water. Maureen couldn’t believe her pumpkin was gone. With hope in her heart, Maureen kept her flashlight beam on the orange pumpkin and watched as it bobbed downstream. Maybe she could find a stick and snag it as it drifted by . . .
Suddenly, the pumpkin disappeared.
Maureen gasped.
Then a sleek head rose from the water. It was one of the river otters that made its home in this stretch of the river, and it was clutching the pumpkin to its chest. Maureen had seen the otters occasionally but never this close and never carrying a pumpkin.
The otter floated on its back, hugging the pumpkin between its paws. The pumpkin was a perfectly sized otter toy. When a second head surfaced in the moonlight and the two otters started playing with the pumpkin, Maureen smiled. She couldn’t help it. She sat on a log, mesmerized by the grace of their bodies sliding through the water, the moonlight glinting off their wet fur and the orange pumpkin, the cuteness of everything about them.
Alfredo sat down beside her and watched too.
Not taking her eyes from the otter show, Maureen told Alfredo, “I paid two dollars and fifty cents for that pumpkin.”
Alfredo didn’t know anything about finances. Was that a lot? If so, he considered it money well spent.
Maureen cast a glance toward Alfredo. “I guess you are a Tricker and a Treater,” she said. “Beside being a thief, that is.”
Alfredo had heard the people in his house talk about trick-or-treating, but the strange and scary people who came to his door on Halloween made him want to hide. He liked the pumpkins and his friends, the otters, better.
When the night cold seeped into Maureen, she rose stiffly and started back toward the house. As she walked through the woods in her flannel pajamas, she felt Alfredo’s big body bump against her leg.
“I don’t need an escort,” she told him, despite stumbling over a tree root and nearly losing her flashlight.
Still, Alfredo stayed by her side. When they entered Maureen’s yard, the lights clicked on again.
At the edge of the patio, Alfredo stopped and sat down. He waited for her to safely reach her door.
As she was about to go in, Maureen turned to him and said, “Don’t be a stranger.”
Alfredo thought the lady who lived next door had a nice voice and he might visit her, but she wasn’t as much fun as visiting the otters.
Maureen could have told him that few things are.
