Wow! The tension has really been building in my absence…
Doesn’t the owner of the “trap” ever check his traps? Is this a DNR trap? A Poacher trap? One might think I’d remember how this story ends up, other than Andy be recued, of course… but this is all new to me, again…
There’s Doc Davis! Returned from the wood-shed or some such thing!
Fans of the strip know that Rusty’s face can take on frightening transmogrifications… that third panel is almost too much to look at… Way to soothe his fears, Mark!
DAYS pass… And so now it’s sinking in… using the past tense… <Andy> WAS so much part of our lives… Goodness! Mark, are you getting ready to bawl?
The Daily Trail 
Right! Mr. Optimist seems to have lost his hopes, as he has lost Andy. And to think that he walked across the country in order to buy him from the original owner.
But wait…this is Lost Forest, Mark’s nature castle. Shouldn’t he be aware of any and all traps and any other man-made apparatuses in his domain, especially something so large? Or does he really spend so much time away from home that he never gets around to exploring his back yard?
“Don’t worry, Cherry, Andy must be just skulking, ashamed to show his face, like what’s his name, the character I abandoned in Nepal after he was buried in an avalanche! Ha haw!”