Five year shoe mystery solved!

Five years ago, not too long after we moved to CA, my husband John had this old pair of deck shoes. They were too old and beaten up to wear out anywhere - but he used to keep them outside near the back door and then slip them on when we went around the vineyard or garden. They were perfectly suited for this - worn in, comfortable, pale so showed the dirt but didn't matter....

One morning in September that year, he got up and one shoe was missing...... We searched around....he wouldn't have taken one off outside and brought the other in....but we checked everywhere...and sure enough - he only had one shoe..... Where had the other disappeared to???? It was a mystery.....

We once did a evening class in "murder mystery" ( that's another story I'll tell you one day - best class ever !) - and even though this wasn't a murder, we wanted to solve it and figure who/what would take one shoe? Our only theory at the time was that there had been a fox around lately. We had seen it in the garden and heard it's calls at night time so we decided that the little fox had taken the shoe...for some reason or other....Didn't really make much sense but then there was no other theory that made any better sense....

Fast forward three months and we got our first rain for months - since the spring. It was a Sunday morning and John was out playing golf. I got up and just glanced out of the window - and what did I see - but John's shoe!!! What a surprise after all this time... It was in an obvious place so if it had been there all along, we would have seen it - but no - it was "returned"!!

So I ran out and picked up the shoe and put it in a big cardboard box and put a big bow on it. I then left for the day and left the box for him to open when he got home!!!

He was surprised by getting his shoe back but then admitted that just the previous week he had given up hope the thrown the other shoe away!!! So now he was left with one shoe again..... I extended our fox theory to include that with the first rainfall, the shoe started to smell a bit so the fox returned it!!!!

It was about this time when we were trying to come up with a name for our vineyard. It will probably come as no surprise to you if you have read my "naming" posts - but we weren't short of names - we had loads. We just couldn't decide which one...but after the shoe incident, we were sorely tempted to call the vineyard and wine "foxtrot"! We could just imagine a wine label with a fox on it with one white shoe on one of his paws......

Well, until yesterday, the fox being the culprit was just our theory and, as we felt, a nice little story. That is until our neighbour emailed us this link.

It's all about a fox in a western town in Germany. A forest worker saw some shoes near a fox's den and investigated further and found 120 shoes in the den! It seems that the fox stole the shoes for her "cubs to play with"!!! How many cubs are there and how many shoes do they need???

Anyhow, although there were missing laces, the shoes were in good condition. John's too was in the same condition as when he lost it! The German shoes have been returned to their rightful owners and no charges will be pressed!


Aren't animals just amazing creatures!!!!

Thanks Craig and Natalie for passing on the German fox news. We now feel confident that our theory from 5 years ago, was indeed correct!