BOONE - There is no description of the suspect or the getaway car, and no motive, unless it's generosity.
All that is known is this: Sometime overnight Monday, after Larry Taylor had walked his dogs about 10 p.m., an entity local residents are calling the Great Magic Pumpkin Fairy descended on Boone.
The result was breathtaking Tuesday. There were pumpkins everywhere.
There were pumpkins lining the steel-pipe boundary of the city park near Colorado 96.
There were pumpkins on the front (and back) steps of the Arkansas Valley Vineland Church.
There were pumpkins outside Boone Town Hall.
And there were pumpkins lovingly set, one on each side, outside most of the front gates of the houses in town. At one house, the pumpkins were set on each side of the gas meter.
There even was a pumpkin sitting on the ground in front of town's "Neighborhood Watch" sign, and it didn't even look sarcastic.
Obviously, someone spent a lot of time on this, and a lot of pumpkins. The result was that Boone had to be the best Halloween-looking little town in Colorado.
Bill Coyle, who works at Boone Grocery and Hardware, said it's never happened before.
"No," he said, leaning on the counter near the cash register. "In the middle of the night, somebody came by and dropped pumpkins all over the place."
There were pumpkins balanced on the concrete parking stops in front of his store.
"It's kinda cool," he said. "It's kinda unique. Throughout the town there's probably a couple of hundred of them. They're everywhere."
Coyle said he doesn't know who left the pumpkins around town.
"No idea," he said.
The Magic Pumpkin Fairy?
"Yeah, the Magic Pumpkin Fairy," he said, "Sure . . ."
Taylor, who lives farther down Main Street, said he didn't know, either.
"When I went to bed last night, it wasn't there," he said.
Nor does Nancy Pennington, the town's postmaster.
Pennington said she first saw the pumpkins while driving to work at 7:30 a.m., and she's delighted.
"They were just all over the place," she said enthusiastically. "It's so cute."
"They left them on people's porches, too," she said. "It was just great. And nobody has smashed a one (of them)!"
As the chief U.S. Postal Service representative of the town, Pennington probably should know who was responsible for this, right? After all, most of the information concerning this small town's residents flows through her hands.
When asked, she replied, giggling, "I have an idea, but I'm not sure. I won't tell."
So there you have it. One small Arkansas Valley town, inexplicably decorated with pumpkins on Halloween eve, looking festive and crisp on a chilly fall day.
The residents' response: "Thank you, Magic Pumpkin Fairy."
