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The Nursery Rhyme News ™
Pumpkineater’s Wife Found Dead In Pumpkin Shell
Body Preserved “Very Well”
The body of a local man’s wife was found yesterday by police searching his yard. Officers found the body of Patricia Pumpkineater stuffed into a hollowed-out pumpkin shell in the backyard of Peter P. Pumpkineater.
Patricia Pumpkineater had been missing for several months, but detectives had come up cold on clues to her potential whereabouts. Known for disappearing for days at a time, it was initially assumed she had simply flitted out again, and would eventually return. But after months had passed, the neighbors began to wonder what had become of her.
“They were married two years ago, but things were rocky from the start,” reports neighbor Jack Sprat. “She kept going off to eat other vegetables. He just couldn’t keep her home. She was a firecracker, that one.”
Peter Pumpkineater was apparently very jealous of his wife’s escapades, and the two argued frequently. “You could hear them yelling from a block away,” says local resident Sheryl Cardinal. “One time, she called him a ‘punkin’ punk,’ in this mocking tone, and he did not like that.”
“I remember her telling him once that she was sick of pumpkin, she wanted a burger or at least a different vine-growing plant for a change,” Sprat recalls. “That was when things started to go really bad and she’d end up running off for days, returning with cucumber seeds in her teeth. He could smell squash on her breath sometimes and it just tore him up inside.”
Though they argued frequently, there was apparently never any physical violence at the Pumpkineater residence. The police had never been called to their home, but neighbors are not surprised that the outcome was violent, with several saying they could tell Peter was consumed with jealousy and rage. The final straw, they say, was probably last Halloween. Peter hates Halloween because he sees Jack-O-Lanterns as a complete waste of good pumpkin, which he prizes as the staff of life. When he came home on October 29 and found Patricia putting candles into pumpkins she’d carved into the likenesses of Hitler, Charles Manson, Al Capone, and Kenny G., he accused her of trying to make everyone hate pumpkins and of desecrating the vegetables.
Patricia Pumpkineater was never seen again.
Authorities arrested Peter Pumpkineater upon finding his wife’s body in the pumpkin shell, where it had been preserved impeccably.
“We took Mr. Pumpkineater into custody yesterday and he is being held without bail,” said police chief Ham Woksel. “He allegedly killed his wife and put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well. The pumpkin’s innards appear to have acted as a preservative.”
The cause of death has not conclusively been determined, but early indicators indicate that she died as a result of pumpkin pie poisoning. “She was apparently force-fed pumpkin pie in large quantities,” Woksel said. “Anytime you get as much nutmeg in your system as her blood tests show, your organs are simply going to shut down.”
“It’s a shame,” commented neighbor Sprat. “Couples today don’t always seem to think about the important things before they rush to get married. You have to know that your mate’s eating habits will balance yours. I’m lucky, because I can eat no fat, but my wife can eat no lean, and so, between the both of us, we lick the platter clean. The downside is that since she eats all that fat, her ass is the size of a Knights of Columbus hall.”
Carol Fitzgerald, a former girlfriend of Peter Pumpkineater’s, has come forward with allegations of her own. “Aside from the whole ‘only eating pumpkins’ thing, he had some major issues,” Fitzgerald told reporters. “He bought me an orange bra once and insisted I wear it while we fooled around. He asked me to dye my hair green and then I found out he was slipping pumpkin juice into my drinks to try to get my skin to turn more orange. The idiot would have had much better results with carrot juice, but he couldn’t bring himself to use another vegetable, even for something that screwed up. He has a total pumpkin fetish.”
The last straw, Fitzgerald said, came when Pumpkineater suggested that she have her teeth replaced with pumpkin seeds. “He said it would make kissing me so much sexier. That was it. I walked.”
Peter Pumpkineater’s lawyer, Tony Koch, said he had not yet gotten a chance to speak to his client about the case. “I did meet with him briefly, but all he wanted to talk about was trying to get the prison kitchen to serve him pumpkin instead of beanie-weenies. Once I can get that off his mind, I think we’ll find out what seems obvious to me: that a one-armed man broke in and killed Peter’s wife with pumpkin pie and put her in that pumpkin shell.”
Koch reported that as is standard in spousal murder cases, Pumpkineater has vowed to catch his wife’s “real” killer.
© 2005 Scott Teel
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