A cable essential to creating online images, missing for several weeks, has surfaced, enabling blogger The Manic Gardener to post once again. The cable, which connects a digital camera to a computer, was produced this morning by “the Manic's” husband, who claims that he “discovered” it in a drawer of stray electronic equipment in his study.
The cable, after its recovery.
This highly suspicious circumstance is being investigated by appropriate authorities. When our crew arrived at the house shared (so far) by the Manic and her husband, it was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape and swarming with uniformed Garden Crime personnel.
One GC officer, removing her green, recyclable cap to wipe her sweaty forehead, had this to say: “This is the worst gardening crime Bozeman has seen in years. We're all sort of in shock here.” —– EXTENDED BODY:
A neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, seemed to take the Manic's part. “I don't like to pre-judge or anything, but look at it. It was found in his study. In a drawer. Like, man, how did it get there if he didn't put it there, huh? Think about it.”
Another neighbor said only, “Where there's smoke, there's fire.”
The two-foot long black cable, which appears not to have been damaged during its absence, disappeared several weeks ago. “I couldn't understand it,” said the Manic Gardener, wringing her hands. “I had trouble locating it right after my trip to Toronto in April, but then I found it, and suddenly it was gone again.”
Asked how her husband came to produce it this morning, she said, “Well, I was just talking about it again—how frustrating it was not to have it—and I said something about how I'd looked everywhere, including outside, and under the couch—I mean, no one's looked under that couch for years—and suddenly he was asking me how long it was, and saying, real casual-like that maybe he had picked it up thinking it was his.
“So I kept things real low-key, and just asked him to check. And he did, and he comes back with my cable! After all this time!
“I told him that I'd thought of asking him directly if he might have picked it up, but I'd sort of assumed that he'd mention it if he had. I mean, it's not as if this was the first time I'd talked about missing it.”
When asked if the loss of the cable had been responsible for the Manic's recent lapse from posting on her gardening blog, she replied tearfully. “I just didn't think I could give my readers the product they've come to expect, and I couldn't bear to give them less.”
A heckler at the sidelines pointed out that some bloggers produce excellent posts without images, and that the Manic herself has been known to post without pictures.
The well-known blogger was unable to reply to this question, as she became incoherent and had to be led away, supported by sympathetic neighbors.
Shortly thereafter, the Manic's husband was led out in woven-grass manacles, said to be tougher than steel, to the donkey waiting to carry him to the county Green-Jail. “All our arrest procedures are environmentally sensitive,” one of the officers informed us. “We try not to use any manufactured products whatsoever.”
He then excused himself to lead the donkey, and a phalanx of guards armed with bamboo spears, to the Green-Jail, explaining, “It'll take us a couple of hours to get there, since we're walking, so we'd better get started.”
Readers who assume that the Manic will be seeking the maximum possible sentence (ten days spent turning compost piles) may be surprised to learn that she appears inclined to be lenient.
“He washed all the dishes this morning,” she said, “and it was a really big stack. And I'd said I would do them yesterday. And I didn't!” At this point she broke down completely.
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