Who Likes a Mystery?!!

If you've read the Mandy books and liked them you'll think this is a pretty cool story. For those of you who don't know about the Mandy books, I'll just say that Mandy loves to solve mysteries. Surprisingly, our mystery actually didn't take too long to solve, but it's a good one!

This past Tuesday my husband noticed there was a dent in the side of our Cadillac and he wondered what had happened. On Wednesday morning he mentioned it to me and we went outside to take a look at this unexplained oddity. Upon careful observation my husband said, "Notice this on top of the hood. It looks like blood." We both looked at it and confirmed it did indeed look like blood. That definitely sparked our curiosity. We started trying to figure out what could have hit the side of our car and splatter blood like that. "Was it a biker or a skater who slammed into the car as it was parked on the road on Monday night? Wow! They must have hit pretty hard to bleed like that!" It didn't really make sense, so I think we both went into the house thinking that we probably would never know the mystery of the dent.

That night I began to read our local newspaper. On the front page an article intrigued me. It was entitled "Dog attacks doe near downtown Grants Pass" I began to read that a "100 pound Pit Bull chased and caught a panicked doe near downtown." I kept reading, "The attacking dog ran through traffic in pursuit of its prey. The doe in its panic hit and damaged a parked car before bounding into the rack of a passing pickup truck." All of a sudden the words parked car stared back at me and a question mark lit up over my head! I then looked at the day it happened which was Monday afternoon. As my husband sat on the couch nearby I explained the story to him and asked, "Could this be the answer to our mystery?" Next, I yelled to the other room, "Hey Molly! Did you drive the Cadillac on Monday to work?!" She confirmed that she had driven to work, which is downtown and had parked on 4th & J. As my husband and I talked it all seemed to make sense that the deer might have been the culprit who made the dent in our Cadillac.

Well, to be quite sure, we decided to call the newspaper to help clarify the details. Sparked into activity by this question, my husband, detective extraordinaire, talked with newspaper reporter Shaun and first asked exactly where in Grants Pass was the car. After explaining it was in the vicinity of 4th & J St, Shaun seemed curious as to why my husband was calling. My husband then explained that he thought the car, hit by the deer, was our Cadillac, which was parked near our daughter' work. One of the first things the reporter asked was, "So did your daughter come home and say, 'a deer hit our car in downtown Grants Pass!' And you thought, 'Right, that's a good story!'" Ha! Ha! Actually Molly hadn't even noticed the dent! :) So, to end this mystery, the police report did say that the parked car was a Cadillac. Amazing! Who would have thought?!

I guess you might be wondering why we didn't first wonder how much it would be to fix the damage. Well, the car is on its way out to the car graveyard so that is why it didn't come into our minds. You might also be wondering what happened to the poor scared doe. The story went on to say that the dog got a hold of it, but passers-by scared off the dog and the doe ran off with its two fawns following it. I assume the deer probably went off to die. A sad ending for that side of the story, but a mystery satisfactorily ended for the Sumpters.

This is our "Gray Ghost" as my in-laws call it. You can see the mysterious dent! The blood has already been washed off.