The “Swape” Swapper (written 4.13.10)

We inaugurated our Community Library on Sunday, with a ceremony and lunch for a hundred, followed by a cutting of the ribbon ceremony at the library and a long night of drinking and dancing. A typical campo party, but having traveled all week before (Tour de Sur!), my final energy reserves were depleted. So today I awoke leisurely for the first time in a while. I stretched, yawned, and wandered out onto my porch, where I did my morning surveillance. Porch decorations seemed to be in their normal places. Gate still locked, as I left it the night before. Trees, normal. Road, dusty. And my swape (pronounced “swa-pay”), or mop, was in the exact place I left it to dry after cleaning the day before. But somehow, it looked different. Closer observation revealed it to be not my mop at all, but in fact an older, mangled version of mine. It was missing many strands, which appeared to have been chopped off, and had a random number “90” painted on the handle. My detective skills led me to believe that one of the following occurred in the less than 24 hour period since I had last used my mop:

1) The residual Clorox and floor cleanser left on the mop after I was too lazy to rinse it in fresh water after cleaning ate away half of the mop strands overnight. As for the mysterious number “90”, maybe I just didn’t notice it before?
2) Someone snuck up to my porch while I was napping after vigorously mopping and snipped off half of the mop strands. They also happened to have a sharpie and left their numeral signature on the mop handle.
3) A really tacaño, or cheap, and sneaky individual switched my relatively new mop out for their gnarled one, and as I refuse to believe it was any of my immediate neighbors, must have planned this out and walked a considerable distance each way with mop in hand.
4) A dog ate half of my swape.

All of these explanations seem ridiculous, and are considerably amusing to consider. Maybe I’m just too easily entertained these days, but will continue to ponder until the matter is resolved to my satisfaction.