With so few clothes, I did laundry on a regular basis. After washing my shorts (fortunately, this wasn’t necessary as a result of the ride with Mrs. Wells… they were just dirty) (Honest) (No, seriously) I hung them on the line outside to dry. A bit later in the afternoon I happened to look out the back window and saw an empty clothesline.

“Mrs. Wells, do you know where my shorts are?”

“Why, they’re out there hangin’ on the line, sweetie,” she responded in that fantastic drawl which had become so familiar.

I opened the back door, and there on the ground were some dirty, chewed rags which were barely recognizable as my biking shorts. 

The Wells lived in a wooded area, so the shorts could’ve been pulled down and used as an aperitíf by any number of the local animals… a raccoon, a squirrel, who knows? But I had my suspicions about the culprit. 

I found her hiding near her doghouse and went with the direct approach.

“Punjab! Did you do this?!?”

She just looked at me with those big, sad, basset hound eyes, but she DIDN’T deny it… not a single word…  so I knew I had solved the case.

Fortunately, the damage ended up not being as bad as it initially appeared and Mrs. Wells was able to repair the tears so they weren’t glaringly noticeable, although once the transformation was complete they were about an inch shorter than before.