other people know how to sleuth properly evidently

Officer Snacks came to the library to drop off a bag of dried hibiscus treats and chat with the staff on his break. He walked up to my desk, loading a picture on his phone. Never let a police officer surprise you with a picture on his phone. Cops only take pictures of things that are surprising even to people who see road accidents every day. Last time it was a guy with half his leg bitten off by a shark. The time before that it was the decayed corpse of a shut-in. Usually I'm morbidly interested and take a peek, but on this day I had just read something that made me unhappy online and I was only in the market for cat gifs.

"NOPE, just tell me."

"You don't want to see? Old lady got her nose bitten off." He reenacted the scene with pantomime, and then I told him about the screaming pig incident. He frowned at me.

"They're not supposed to be shooting down there. Usually they just stick 'em and there's a lot of squealing." 

"Yeah, I've heard that before, and this really sounded like a woman, so it freaked me out."

"Where was this? What time? How close was it?" 

I did my own reenactment with pantomime. He said, "I'm going to tell my sergeant. If anybody's missing, you're my witness."

"Oh, ok. And there's my 911 call*." 

He nodded and walked out, pocketing his phone. "Try the hibiscus! It's good."

The dried hibiscus really is good, and it also feels like you're chewing giant spiders, which drives it right up to the top of my list of terrifying foods to put in care packages.

*And this blog, making me murder victim #2 if the neighborhood killer is any good at googling. HI DON'T KILL ME, I DIDN'T SEE A THING. (I'm not actually scared of the internet because I work with the public and any of those weirdos can murder me in real life any time they want. Although it has already been established that I am too naive to survive in the wild, so someone tell me to take this post down if I'm recklessly endangering everyone.)