Huh?

It's winter here in Wisconsin. That means it's cold, snowy, windy...altogether fairly unpleasant most of the time. Which makes the item I saw on the side of the road today all that more remarkable and confusing. I have to say that it would be odd and confusing anyway, the item being what it is, but the fact that it was twelve degrees outside this morning makes it, to me at least, a bit remarkable.

This morning, on the shoulder of Highway 49, laying in the gravel and ice....

was a pineapple.

At roughly sixty miles an hour it looked whole and undamaged, though undoubtedly frozen. How on Earth did a pineapple get there? Most likely someone threw it out their window, seeing as no one walks down the highway (well, no one in their right mind, anyway), but why would they do that? Why throw a pineapple out the window? I can't wrap my mind around it.

Because I cannot come up with a logical explanation for this phenomenon (and that's really what it is) I've decided that this is what happened:

In the year 1677, a young man named Kika was walking along the shore near his village on Moloka'i. It was a gorgeous Hawaiian afternoon, but a bit hot. Kika thought a fresh pineapple would be delicious, so he wandered inland to the grove of pineapple trees that his tribe tended. He found a tree with suitably ripe fruit, climbed up the trunk and cut down a fragrant, juicy pineapple. After descending with the pineapple, Kika took a closer look at it, and decided it was the nicest, juciest pineapple ever. It was, in fact, the perfect pineapple. Kika said a thank-you to Kane, the god of forests and trees, and cut into the pineapple.

What Kika didn't know was that Kane had chosen that moment to inhabit that particular pineapple. Who knows why, and how should we? Can anyone claim to know the mind of Hawaiian gods? At any rate Kane was not happy that Kika cut into his flesh, and in a moment of panic and rage he teleported both the pineapple and Kika to present day Waupun, Wisconsin.

Needless to say, Kika freaked out and ran. As he was dressed in a simple grass skirt, he died rather quickly of exposure to the cold and wind and was eaten by coyotes. Kane said a prayer for the pineapple and teleported back to Hawaii. The pineapple stayed fresh on the side of highway 49 for some time.

Was it ever picked up? Who knows.

But you can bet your ass I'll be looking for it on my way home tonight.


M. PotPie