We resume the story as Our Heroine is returning from her job of collecting litter for fingerprinting. Her search for Litter Perpetrator #1, the Kool cigarette carton and Budweiser dumper had nearly concluded as she narrowed the number of suspects to two. One was Bouvier des Flandres, a Flemish ufology expert who posed as a security guard at the Air Force Satellite Tracking Station.
In the course of her work as Litter Investigator, Our Heroine had uncovered one of the government's best kept secrets: the entire Air Force Satellite Tracking Station (AFSTS) was in fact a top-secret UFO research and development (R&D) center. But this fact had little significance to Our Heroine except where it concerned the alleged litterer Bouvier des Flandres.
The other suspect was Enrique Felderbrush, a Canadian who was on holiday, eh? and was camping in her neighbor's backyard. Felderbrush was already under investigation for illegal dumping, a result of his throwing his empty Vegemite bottle in Our Heroine's recyclables bin as it awaited pickup by a garbage truck.
As Our Heroine bumped along North Main Date Palm Street in her dromedary cart, her suspicions were aroused by the sight of a man crouching beneath the bushes of a residence. Our Heroine wheeled her cart around, pulled into the driveway and accosted the man.
"You there! Suspicious man, what are you doing?"
The man feigned poor hearing. "Excuse me?"
"You look like you are up to no good, crouching there beneath those bushes. Are you casing the joint, perhaps? Looking for the fake rock where the key is hidden so you can rob these poor people blind?"
"Are you nuts?" he said, "I live here!"
"If that is so", Our Heroine said logically, "Then what was you sniggering at?"
"What?!" the man yelled. He was indignant.
"Oh, I mean, why are you crouching beneath these shrubberies?"
"I'm installing the screens in my windows, you [expletive deleted]!"
It was at this point that Our Heroine's investigative training helped her notice several key details. The man held a number of screens and was well dressed, as if he had recently come home from a day at the office. She also noticed that a window, located just above the shrubberies, was open and a woman was peering quizzically at her from inside the house.
"Just who the **** are you?!" the man shrieked. He really had become quite unreasonable. Our Heroine decided that she had better go.
"A better question is, who am I not?" she replied. Our Heroine mounted her dromedary cart and galumphed off, leaving the man to ponder her thought provoking words.
On her way home, Our Heroine stopped at Good Buddy's house for the benefit of the intellectually stimulating conversation that was always a result of their meetings. The heat of the day drove them to Good Buddy's kiddie pool, where, floating on their backs, the two friends discussed the difference between an ambulance and an ambulette. Good Buddy was of the opinion that ambulette, a French derivative, was the feminine form of ambulance, while Our Heroine argued that the difference pertained to medical equipment contained therein.
The discussion became heated as neither friend was willing to concede, and it terminated when Our Heroine yelled, "Blast and darn your etymology, Good Buddy!", and squirted her with the business end of a water noodle. Since a water noodle actually has two business ends, this action escalated the conflict drastically. No one knows what the outcome might have been if Our Heroine had not suddenly been distracted by the appearance of Cute Neighbor.
Cute Neighbor's rare skin disease, an allergy to the sun, made him almost entirely housebound. Like certain kinds of exotic flowers, he only showed his face outside five times a year, and because she loved botany, Our Heroine watched for Cute Neighbor's appearances like Bouvier des Flandres watched for UFO's. Or like a ravenous fox watches an old chicken with a limp.
Our Heroine leaped out of the kiddie pool, forgetting that she was still gripping her noodle, forgetting what she was and was not wearing. You see, Our Heroine had not been carrying her bathing suit in the dromedary cart, so she submerged herself in the kiddie pool while still wearing her work uniform, which was a black plastic garbage bag. You also see, Our Heroine had removed her undergarments, as she did not want the dreaded wet-undergarment-mark to show on her garbage bag.
For sixteen minutes, Our Heroine blissfully burbled on to Cute Neighbor about her near-success in identifying Litter Perpetrator #1, gathering evidence in the Vegemite case and in nearly apprehending an under-shrubber burglar. Our Heroine did most of the talking because of her companion's habit of relating everything to his rare skin disease. For example, when asked how he was doing, he would reply, "Pale", or "White and sunless".
As she talked, it occurred to Our Heroine that Cute Neighbor's face wore a peculiar expression that she couldn't quite place. Suddenly she recognized it: Cute Neighbor looked as if Our Heroine had just announced that goat deaths were on the rise in Hampstead County. She was suddenly terribly afraid of a connection between Cute Neighbor's expression and her undergarments.
"In case you're wearing why I'm not wondering--" She began, and promptly became twice as flustered as before. Fortunately, Our Heroine had received extensive crisis training and knew exactly what to do.
"Oh my cow! Look over there! It's Captain Jerky Pants!" So saying, she dashed into the woods and aligned herself with a tree.
"Hmm", Cute Neighbor said to himself, "She bottom be so white she must be gotten undies". He glanced into the forest and saw the magenta colored business end of a water noodle peeking out from behind a tree. He sighed heavily and decided to reduce his number of days out of doors to four.
