CSI: Hipster Banana Edition

Yesterday some friends (who are coming to the 3rd Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival later this week) mentioned that they had seen an article claiming that the new nickname for the pawpaw is "the hipster banana." As soon as I heard that, I looked up what hipsters wear and put on my distressed Chuck Taylors, which I slept in last night just to always be looking the part (and you'll see they make a cameo later in this post).

This morning as I went off to my hipster job while wearing my hipster shoes I realized that, somehow, there had come to be some splattered hipster banana on our driveway. (I know it's very bourgeois to have a driveway and to have purchased a house, but I assure you that we're saving up to be able to afford to rent a place that doesn't have a driveway so that we can just park our tandem Vespa on the street.) 

The splattered viscera of a pawpaw on our driveway. I could barely believe my eyes. Then I realized that the slug-covered pawpaw, which I had simply left under the tree, had disappeared a few days ago. Hence, even before heading off to work I had identified the victim. Sadly, I had a sense it would meet a fate like this, given the invertebrate-types that this particular hipster banana had been hanging out with.

Once I got home from work (see there's my hipster shoe) I needed to turn the driveway into a proper crime scene. So I grabbed a piece of S's sidewalk chalk and got down to the morbid business of chalking things up. With the chalk lines, the method of extinguishing the pawpaw becomes apparent: it fell, or better was pushed, or more precisely was thrown onto the cement. The area without the pawpaw guts in the center (inside the chalk circle) is where the fruit made impact with the ground, and then the chalk marks the extent of the splattering. Grisly, I know.

I further surveyed the driveway and found other evidence. An archipelago of evidence.

Whoever did it, it wasn't a clean job. It was a crime of passion, with the pawpaw (based on cold hard evidence) being thrown repeatedly onto the cement. Bludgeoned even.

For the most part, the criminals disposed of the body, leaving only splatters, but I did find this genetic material.

As I applied the final chalk lines, the neighborhood kids were walking home from school. Several of them watched me as they walked by, and I saw a few with guilty looks in their eyes, as if they had been surprised that when they returned to the scene of the crime, I had made it into a genuine crime scene with chalk. This photo is another splattering with an absent center, where the absent center shows the place of impact.

Not for the weak of stomach, this type of work.

FYI: Not only was I wearing my beat up Chucks while I conducted the investigation but I also had my hair dyed pastel for the occasion.