It was one of those nights when it just really would’ve been nice to have a small, green, mystery-solving Muppet from your childhood around…

More specifically, it was a dark and stormy Wednesday evening, and I was just returning home after a long and arduous day of not being home. And most importantly of all, it was garbage day – an entire day here in suburbia that’s dedicated solely to the disposal of our junk, doodads, and other decaying perishables. I mean, I don’t want to brag, but it’s a pretty big deal around here, and better yet … it’s something that we get to do every single week!

(except on weeks where there’s a holiday or the garbage men decide to skip work in favor of catching some rays at the beach…)

Nonetheless, that didn’t happen on this particular Wednesday and without folly, our garbage was faithfully picked up and whisked away to some no doubt environmentally-friendly facility out of sight and out of mind precisely as scheduled. In fact, all seemed right with the world, knowing that our household was officially garbage free for another week … that is, until I returned home that fateful evening to find that despite the garbage being disposed of successfully, there was still something afoot … whether it was trouble or mischief or possibly even just raccoons was still to be foreseen…

You see, ordinarily on this special day, I come home to find our empty garbage can resting comfortably at the end of the driveway, but mind you, this was no ordinary day, primarily because … and you may have guessed it by the title of this column … while the empty garbage can itself was found exactly where expected, the device used to cover this receptacle (commonly referred to as a “lid”) was nowhere to be found! It was as if it had simply grown legs and walked away, except that such an act wouldn’t be simple at all because at least the last time I checked, our garbage can lid was an inanimate object incapable of such mobility.

Unable to find any professional detectives willing to take on my case, I knew that if this mystery was ever going to get solved, it was going to require sleuthing from none other than yours truly … which could’ve really gone either way because of all the things that I’m extraordinarily famous for, getting to the bottom of things traditionally isn’t one of them unless we’re talking about a gallon of chocolate fudge ice cream, but enough with the fat jokes, for there’s a garbage can lid mystery to be figured out!

Now I’ve learned from watching many an episode of Scooby Doo and Duckman, the first step towards solving a case is choosing some people to potentially blame it on – some call them “suspects,” others call them “scapegoats,” but they’re really all the same thing. In the instance that you’re aren’t actually able to figure out who dunnit, these will be the folks who will ultimately get pinned with the crime, and since I really didn’t know much about solving mysteries anyways, it just seemed easier to skip past that whole investigation process and get right to the part where justice prevails! The way I saw it, the Case of the Missing Garbage Can Lid had three potential perps:

• those damn neighbor kids – always seen poking around my yard, getting into “mischief”
• the wind – able to rip off entire roofs in a single, hurricane-force bound, so what’s to stop it from playing Frisbee with my lid?
• some random dog – again with the Frisbee analogy, although admittedly it’d have to be a pretty big dog to be heaving that thing around!

At this point in the game, it could’ve been any of them, really, or even some bizarre collaboration of all of them combined – those damn neighbor kids could’ve came riding in on some random dog, stole my garbage can lid right out in plain sight, and then used the lid itself like an oddly-shaped kite to harness the mighty powers of the wind and soar away to safety. I have no way of knowing … like I said, I’m not a detective. All I know for sure is that somewhere out there, someone or something is living the highlife with a misappropriated garbage can lid, whereas here I am left unsure of how our next garbage collection day will unfold, considering that I no longer have a suitable cover for my trash receptacle. Fortunately with putting our latest out on Wednesday during the lid’s last successful run, we won’t need to make use of our secondary weekly pickup date tomorrow, however next week will come soon enough and looking into the future without a lid, I just don’t know what we’re going to do…

The moral of our sad, unresolved story here today? Be sure to bring in the empty garbage can as soon as the trash is picked up? No. Haul your garbage to the dump yourself so as to never risk such tragic lid loss that I’ve endured? Nope. When you first buy your garbage can, pay close attention to what your neighbors already have so that if your lid mysteriously disappears on a dark and stormy Wednesday evening, you still have the option of pilfering theirs as a replacement later?

Is it possible to even buy just the lid anywhere?! My detective skills tell me that I’m about to find out…