Merriton

Roscoe was right. It was the third sign of the day. Stuck onto the official park sign was a hand-written piece of cardboard that said, “Zen.” Those stupid kids from Emigration were changing every state park sign to say, “Mt. Zen.”

How’d they even reach this one?! It was so high that Kevin couldn’t even reach the sign, much less the stupid piece of cardboard stuck to it. He looked at the dusty ground around the sign and noticed four rectangular indentations. They had a ladder.

Roscoe was wrong.

There’s no way those losers from Emigration were doing this. Kevin was willing to believe that they were motivated enough to slap a bunch of hand-written signs all over the place, but those kids had the organizational skills of cats. The concept of them bringing a ladder to pull this off was too much. It was NOT the kids from Emigration.

So who was it?

Kevin went back to his ranger truck and pulled out the other two signs. One was written on the back of a potato box. The other was written on the back of a box for… what was it? Hamburger patties? As far as Kevin could tell, it was for frozen hamburger patties. And the one stuck up on the sign? It looked like it was the lid of a donut box, complete with grease stains from the donuts. They were all food-related boxes, so whoever was doing this worked at the grocery stores or had access to their garbage. But the garbage bins were bear-proof. How could those kids get into the bear-proof dumpsters? They must KNOW somebody at the grocery store.

That didn’t explain the hamburger patties, though. Grocery stores don’t buy hamburger patties in big boxes like that, do they? Kevin took a breath of pine-scented air and felt a chill go through him. The crisp of autumn was coming early this year and the wind was cutting through his ranger’s uniform. Soon it would be time to change to the heavy weight of his winter browns. Kevin abandoned the sign in search of a ladder and headed to Mt. Zen Cafe to get a hot chocolate and cruller.