I remember it well. I was in the middle of playing tic tac toe with a Mafia member we'd just detained when I received the call. Agent Pepper assigned me to a very old and very cold case. All I had to go on were sparse details of the last portion of the old lady’s life and a possible cause of death. Everybody claimed that swallowing the horse killed her, but I knew better than to confuse correlation with causation.
Agent Pepper wanted to know who, if anybody, was involved in the old lady’s death, but I had so many more questions. I knew that swallowing a fly eventually led the old lady to swallow the horse, but nobody seemed to know why she swallowed the fly in the first place. How was she able to swallow a cow and a horse? Did the spider actually catch the fly in her stomach? If so, how did the spider withstand the acidic environment of her stomach and manage to capture the fly? Where did the old lady get all of those animals? Did she steal them? Was there some poor kid who was devastated because the old lady had a hankering for Hank? Why did she think that swallowing other animals would solve her problems when that’s what got her into trouble in the first place?
I decided to start with how she was able to swallow a cow and a horse. Two viable hypotheses immediately entered my mind: she was at least 30 feet tall or she had a jaw that could unhinge and possessed pythonistic qualities. If the latter were true, she would have had to be a wizard who descended from the Slytherin house. If the former were true, I was going to have to track down Jack and get some of his magic beans. I would have to conduct thorough research before I discovered which was true.
The variety of animals she consumed struck me as odd. The old lady either had to have the means to travel a large distance to obtain all of these animals or she had immediate access to them, which would significantly narrow the number of potential places she could have lived. It would be relatively easy for a wizard to apparate to the necessary places, assuming she received a Hogwarts-quality education. However, there are no known wizarding schools in this country. Perhaps, if this hypothesis was true, she was taught by an individual.
As for the old lady being a giant, the only way she could have lived undetected back in those days is if she lived in the mountains. How she would have snuck into this country would be another mystery in and of itself. But if she was confined to the mountains, how did she manage to obtain these animals? Horses were common enough, but flies would never get within 100 miles of the mountains. Not only this, dogs have the keenest awareness of the scent of giants. No dog would ever wander into the clutches of a giant. She would have had to mask her scent and lure the dog to his death or someone would have to bring the dog and other animals to her.
I then pondered if eating a horse could be a legitimate cause of death. If the old lady was a Slytherin wizard, it would take her many moons to be able to digest the other animals before moving on to the horse. Any wizard who attempts to swallow a horse would literally be biting off more than they can chew. Unless she casted a protective incantation, a horse would almost certainly split her open from the inside out. Giants, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of eating several animals at once without causing any discomfort to their digestive system. Of course, giants do have food allergies and can contract digestive diseases. Another possibility all together is that the animals that were consumed contained poison or fatal diseases in their systems.
But how could it possibly have been a giant? The only time I had ever heard of giants in this country was when they tried to step over the border fence before their height was adjusted by waving wands and shouts of, “Reducio!” There’s no way- wait. Could it be? I knew it was an odd occurrence, but was it…? I thought it was a tree, but I knew trees didn’t have pulses. I chalked it up to an overactive imagination. And those eyes that I saw, those weren’t from many animals hanging out after their bedtime like I had initially thought.
In the midst of pondering this case, Agent Gazpacho entered and slipped a post it note into my hand. The name of the old lady had been hastily scrawled onto the neon green square. Barry Bonds. That was a giant name if I had ever heard one. Nobody except giants were named Barry. And every giant’s last name was either Bonds or Blood.
Somebody knew. Somebody knew very specific details surrounding the final moments of her life. They knew the exact order in which she consumed the animals. Flies are so insignificant that a giant would scarcely notice if she ate one. She would almost certainly have to be informed that she did, indeed, eat a fly. She may not even have known what a fly is. Flies are nonexistent where she's from. Who did the author of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly get her information from? Only one person- the murderer. Whether or not that was the author I was determined to find out.
As I pulled up to Rose Bone’s dwelling, I realized she had a fitting last name. Bones were scattered everywhere in her yard. She even had a wind chime made from some ribs, probably from her BBQ business. I was received quite warmly when I knocked on the door. She handed me some water as I sat on a sofa that nearly swallowed me. “So tell me about your book. How did you hear about the old lady? How did you know she swallowed a fly?”
“I met her in the woods one day when I was hiking. She told me everything she had swallowed before I saw her swallowing the horse.”
“And you have no idea why she swallowed the fly?”
“Not at all, as I stated several times in my book.”
“And how did she know she swallowed a fly?”
“Why wouldn't she know she swallowed a fly?”
“Because she was a giant.”
Surprised that I knew, she broke down sobbing. “OK, fine. I gave her a cookie. And before she put it in her mouth, I realized there was a dead fly on it. I tried to warn her, but it was too late. She had already swallowed the fly. She was panicking because she had a phobia of flies. I had to think quick. I saw a spider nearby, and told her to swallow that so it could catch the fly. But then the spider tickled her stomach and started making webs, so she swallowed a bird to catch the spider. But she swallowed a woodpecker. It wouldn't stop pecking its beak on her stomach, so she swallowed a cat to catch the bird. Then she couldn't stop throwing up hairballs, so she swallowed a dog to catch the cat. Then the dog wouldn't stop barking, so she swallowed a cow to catch the dog. That was an udder disaster. Cows have 4 stomachs, and she didn't have enough food to feed herself and 4 other stomachs. Then she swallowed a horse to catch the cow. This horse had a horn like a unicorn, and its horn ripped a hole in her stomach. She got an infection and she died. I felt so guilty. I had to write about it, but I couldn't bring myself to retell everything that had happened.”
Speechless, I just handed her my phone so she could repeat her story to Agent Pepper. With Rose in my squad car and more questions than I came with, I headed for the police station.
