James came to me yesterday and uttered a phrase I never expected to hear from him–namely, “Were you grilling last night?”

Now, as my readers may well know, the odds of my spontaneously grilling anything are about like the odds of my spontaneously combusting. Probably less, actually, spontaneous combustion doesn’t seem to require a skill threshold. I can make toast, tea, and instant oatmeal, but that’s about the extent of my cooking skills. Grilling, so far as I’m concerned, is some form of black magic.

“What? Grilling? Me? Why?”

“The cover’s off the grill.”

I looked. Yup, the vinyl grill-cozy is on the ground. “Maybe it was raccoons.”

“Taking the whole cover off?”

“Maybe they smelled food on it.”

He went out. A bit later, he came back. “There’s a spot sort of like somebody cooked something.”

“You cook all the–”

“It wasn’t me. Maybe someone came up from the lake.”

I considered this. “Sooooo….you believe that sometime in the night, someone snuck into our backyard for clandestine grilling? A rogue–no! A serial griller!”

(Hey, I thought it was clever.)

James gave me a look and sank back into what I assume are paranoid dreams of strangers holding our grill hostage. I’m still thinkin’ it was raccoons.