Higashikagawa: The Case of the Missing Sandwich

At approximately 11:35 a.m., Jake and I arrived at the scene.  Where before had been a beautiful, handmade sandwich containing expensive imported cheese, there was now a grisly tableau.  The bread and cheese were missing entirely, and in there place the tomatoes, avocado, cucumber, and roasted red pepper were piled in a heap on the typing paper that was serving for a plate.  It didn’t make any sense; what would or could eat just the bread and cheese and leave everything else?  How could it have eaten the top and bottom of the sandwich without spilling the contents on the ground?  Who could do such a thing to such a fantastic sandwich?  Why, when we had left the sandwich unattended for half an hour to collect firewood, was it left alone only to be eaten in our second five-minute trip for kindling?  What, in short, the hell?

Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.  Gruesome! 

The two of us could vouch for each other’s whereabouts sure enough; besides, having just eaten our own sandwiches half an hour before, we were unlikely suspects for eating another one (though I might have liked to try).  Equally unlikely was Jenn, who had been knitting in the tent while we were gone.  Though she had not eaten the sandwich yet (the sandwich in question was hers, which I suppose makes her the real victim here), her fondness for tomatoes is legendary -- barring some kind of single-minded, sudden-onset lycanthropy, she was out of the picture.

There were few clues for us in the plastic garbage bag that had been ripped open.  No claw marks, no footprints, no cleverly-worded taunts of our investigative capacity (thus ruling out the Riddler).  Indeed, nothing seemed to have been missing from the garbage at all.  The sandwich’s bread was too big for a bird to have flown away with it or a cat to have eaten it in one go.  With little to go on, we declared it the work of tanooki, the Japanese raccoon dog that Jenn and I had spotted in Wakayama two nights before.  The only thing we knew about tanooki was its oversized testicles and its propensity for magic; with no other clues to speak of, we concluded that they must also possess a ferocious hunger for caraway Colby matched only by an aversion to vegetables.

Closing the book on this case, Jake and I retired to the campground’s office to buy some coffee and do our laundry.  There, we received new, chilling information from the camp hosts: there are no tanooki living on Shikoku.  The two old men suggested crows or perhaps a stray cat, and laughingly advised us to be more careful next time.

Utilizing the Holmes deductive method, the only conclusion I can reasonably come to is that the sandwich was eaten by the camp hosts.  Case closed.

It may also have been Tenty, the lovable town drunk.

Our work done, we celebrated in the traditional fashion of our people (hippies):