3—The Mystery of the Rolling Pumpkins

Great Aunt Nature Walkers Backyard

"I am very concerned," said Great Aunt Nature Walker as she led Lucy and Hannah around her house into the backyard. It was a very nice big yard next to a lovely thick green woods. "My pumpkins have begun acting very strangely,"she said.

"What are the pumpkins doing?" asked Lucy.

Great Aunt Nature Walker pointed to two small pumpkins on the grass and then to two small stumps between the azalea and rhododendron bushes just beyond the pumpkins. "For a week," Great Aunt Nature Walker explained, "those pumpkins were sitting very quietly—one on each of those two small stumps. But when I came out yesterday morning, there they were on the grass, just as you see them now."

Who rolled the pumpkins
off their stumps?

Great Aunt Nature Walker stood looking down at the pumpkins and scratching her head. "When was the last time you heard of pumpkins rolling themselves off stumps and across the grass?"
"Never," replied Lucy.

"Quite right," replied Great Aunt Nature Walker. "So how did these pumpkins end up on the grass? I am glad you are here to help me find the answer to the mystery of the rolling pumpkins."

Hannah ran over to one of the little pumpkins and picked it up. "Play!" she exclaimed.

Suddenly, an answer popped up in Lucy's head. "Maybe some children came in your yard and were playing with the pumpkins," she said. "But then their mother called them, and they accidentally forgot to put the pumpkins back."

"That's it!" replied Great Aunt Nature Walker. "Very excellent thinking." But then her excitement faded. "The problem," she said, "is that the pumpkins rolled off at night."
Lucy understood the problem immediately. "So everyone was asleep," she said, "and not outside playing because it was dark."

"Yes," agreed Great Aunt Nature Walker, slumping deep into thought once again.
For a moment Lucy was dejected because she couldn't think of any other answer.

"We must not be dejected," cried Great Aunt Nature Walker in a determined voice. "Finding answers to these outdoor mysteries can be very tricky indeed. But Nature Walkers are people who just have fun looking around at Nature and thinking about what the answers might be."

Realizing this, Lucy now thought being a Nature Walker was even more fun than before.

Meanwhile, Hannah was climbing up and down the three different sized stumps as if they were stairs. Lucy became worried that her rambunctious little sister might fall so stepped closer to the stumps to stand guard. "While you're over there," Great Aunt Nature Walker said, "you might look behind those stumps for some clues. A clue," she explained, "is something that doesn't answer your question but helps you think of the answer. To find clues, you just look very carefully."

Lucy still wasn't quite sure how to recognize a clue. But she helped Hannah down from the middle stump, and together they looked around very carefully. "There are some leaves and twigs and and dirt," Lucy told Great Aunt Nature Walker.
"Mud," said Hannah pointing.
"And two little piles of mud," Lucy reported. "One is on the dirt beside the leaves. The other one is under the leaves."

Mud Piles...or a Clue??!

"You have done a very excellent job of looking," Great Aunt Nature Walker complimented Lucy and Hannah as she peered over the stumps. "And oh my!" she exclaimed as she stepped closer and leaned over to look at the mud, "I believe you have discovered the clue we are looking for."

Lucy and Hannah had never been more puzzled.
"How do little mud piles tell us who rolled the pumpkins off their stumps?" Lucy asked.

"Well," said Great Aunt Nature Walker with a big smile, "I no longer so sure it was a person who rolled those pumpkins off their stumps."

Lucy's eyes grew wide. "Was it elves, then?" she asked, remembering how tricky the elves in the forest could be.

Great Aunt Nature Walker laughed. "Rolling pumpkins off stumps is definitely a prank elves would find amusing," she said, "but in this case, I think those piles of mud tell us something different. You see, the piles are not mud at all. They are bear scat."

This made no sense to Lucy "Scat" was a word some grownups said to cats to tell them to go away.
Hannah waved her arms at the air. "Scat . . . scat out," she called, and several birds flitted off from the tree overhead.

Great Aunt Nature Walker smiled. "You're both right about the word scat," she said "but sometimes words have more than one meaning. In this case, 'scat' is what Official Nature Walkers call the piles animals leave when they go to the bathroom. So what these little piles tell me that a bear was standing right here behind these stumps."

It was funny to think bears went to bathroom just like people and the dogs she had seen in the park. Bears and other forest animals seemed different somehow and so it didn't seem that they would do such an ordinary thing.

"And here's another clue," said Great Aunt Nature Walker pointing to the blackberry bushes just past the stumps, along the edge of the woods. "Bears love blackberries. And right there above the little piles of bear scat, all the blackberries are gone from the bush."

Lucy and Hannah looked. And sure enough, there were blackberries on the bushes to the right and blackberries to the left but no blackberries in the middle.

"Yes," Great Aunt Nature Walker said, "I think maybe the bear had his fill of blackberries and began wondering if the pumpkins might make an even better meal. In trying to find out, that hungry old black bear rolled those pumpkins right off their stumps. Then finding them too hard to eat, he just left them. We can't be sure, of course, because we didn't see this happen. But the clues tell us it might be a good answer to the mystery of our rolling pumpkins."

Lucy enjoyed thinking about the mystery in this way—that is, she enjoyed it until Hannah said, "Bear . . . zoo."
"Yes," said Great Aunt Nature Walker, "some bears do live in a zoo. But this bear lives in the forest."

And all of a sudden, it occurred to Lucy that a bear—A BEAR!—had been standing right where they were standing. She grabbed Hannah's hand, looked around, and prepared to run away from the bear into Great Aunt Nature Walker's house.

But then Great Aunt Nature Walker said, "Bears don't like being around people. So they come around looking for berries at night when people are asleep." Lucy was very relieved to hear this.

Deer Scat

Then Great Aunt Nature Walker stepped a few feet to the right. "Deer also come at night," she said,
"but sometimes during the day as well. "Look here." She pointed to a pile of little round black balls on the grass. Each little ball is about the size of a marble. "This is a pile of deer scat. This is a clue that tells us deer have also been here."

"What do the deer like to eat?" Lucy asked.

Great Aunt Nature Walker laughed. "Just about everything. Flowers, leaves, and the apples from my tree. Look over here," she said as they walked toward a tall yellow and very odd looking bush. The branches went way out like arms at the top and were full of leaves. But there were hardly any branches or leaves in the middle or at the bottom. "The deer enjoy eating these yellow dogwood leaves. So why do you think they do not seem to eat the very tall leaves?"

Lucy thought and thought. Then she noticed that Hannah was more interested in the orange flowers on the small bush that was beside the tall yellow bush. "Maybe the deer aren't tall enough to reach the top leaves on the yellow bush," Lucy said.

The Very Odd Looking Bush

"I think that is a very excellent guess," Great Aunt Nature Walker said. "Hopefully, the deer will come by later and tell us."

Lucy was very excited at the possibility of seeing a deer. But how would the deer tell them? Do deer really talk?

"Well, now," said Great Aunt Nature Walker, "one mystery at at time is surely enough. We have found the answer to the mystery of the rolling pumpkins. So let's go inside for some apple cider and popcorn. My friend Adora Birch is also inside and has been wanting to meet you."

"Why didn't she come outside?" Lucy asked. "Is she sick?"

"Oh, no," replied Great Aunt Nature Walker, "Adora Birch is quite well."

"Is she afraid of bears?" Lucy wondered.

"Not all all," replied Great Aunt Nature Walker. "In fact, Adora Birch grew up in a forest and got to know some bears before she came to live with me."

Lucy thought Adora Birch must be very brave and interesting. But then she grew a little concerned about meeting someone who had lived in a forest and knew bears. Would Adora Birch have long scary straggly hair like a Halloween witch and frighten Hannah? Just in case, Lucy took her little sisters's hand as they followed Great Aunt Nature Walker around to the front door of her house.