wolf!! wolf!!

I tend to have a vivid imagination

     I pounded on a neighbor's door one night because I looked in his living room window and saw flames.
     I am surprised he answered.  I was yelling and pounding.   Actually, I don't remember if he opened the door or came around the corner of the house.  Seems he was in the back yard burning debris of some sort.  I really didn't see the fire in his house, but through his house.
     That imagination leads me to jump, no.......jump is too innocent.  Let's go with catapult to conclusions.  Usually wrong ones.
     Take today.
     Beautiful day.  Decided to ride my bike.  Took it to town, rode the path.  I was on the new extension out by the railroad tracks when I saw two bikes laying in the weeds.  Nice looking bikes.  New looking bikes.
      I didn't see anyone around, so I kept riding out to Beebe Drive. 
     All the while that imagination is going crazy.
     Are they stolen bikes, abandoned by panicked thieves?  Did the riders go up and play in a box car, only to have the train take off or the door close and trap them?  Are they now on their way to Ohio or Washington?
     Or the worst:  Did they get hit by a train?
     So when I rode back I stopped and got off my bike.  I yelled, "Anybody here?"
     No answer.
     I climbed up the embankment to the railroad tracks and yelled, "Whose bikes?  Anybody here?  Hello?"
     No answer.
     I scoured the tracks, looking for blood or body parts.  None, thankfully.
     I started down the embankment, lost my balance, stumbled forward and would have landed face down in the mud if my prodigious belly hadn't provided a cushion.
     I don't know what I tumbled through, but I know I itched like crazy until I could wash my arms off.
     I don't think Jackie noticed the scraped knee.
     I called home and she gave me the non emergency number for Rochelle police.
    I called  and explained where I found the bikes and asked if they had any reports of missing kids or bikes.  The nice lady said no.  She also said she would not have a unit come out, because usually someone comes and gets the bikes.
     But she did say to call back tomorrow if the bikes were still there.
     I decided to take a picture of the bikes and was just about ready to click when I heard voices.  Two voices.  Boy voices.
     Boys with fishing poles.  Coming for their bikes.
     "Oh good.  Nobody stole them," said the younger of the two.
     In my defense, they were a long way from the water!
     I didn't call the police back, because they said not to contact them again until tomorrow.  Plus, they had my number.
     But there I was, convinced a child sexual predator nabbed them, or they were hit by a train, or caught in a box car, or abandoned stolen bicycles, or swept up by aliens.  I even pictured them tied up and left on the tracks, like in the old time melodramas, where the hero saves them just as the speeding train approaches.
     I always hear security people say:  See something, say something.
     Unfortunately, I do.