Well, it certainly looks like they were able to stop the hogs before they consumed everything. And it certainly looks like a disaster! Not sure if any of the people standing by are part of the Sunny Soleil Society. At least I don’t see anybody wearing a flamboyant “Easter” hat.

However, I don’t get today’s moral. What is the “hard lesson” Cherry learned today: Crime does not pay? You reap what you sow? Don’t leave tire tracks at the scene of the crime? From the state of the road, I’m guessing that all of those black dots on the road represent bush residue, falling away from the swine as they are driven away in Dirk’s truck. It certainly cannot be a new drawing technique by Rivera to suggest shading.

As any reader of the strip knows by now, Rivera is not given to suggesting volume or darkness using hatching, dots, or other such drawing techniques. Instead, she tends towards defining flat planes and shapes, using color to suggest light and volume. This is one reason why the black & white publications of her strips sometime look harsh or incomplete.  But Rivera is used to working and publishing on the Internet, which has no publishing limitations. And maybe it’s part of Rivera’s breaking from the older artistic conventions used in the prior incarnation of the strip.

Getting back to the story, I’m still left puzzled by what I’m reading. Once again, Rivera seems to be paraphrasing a popular quote in the text box of the last panel (“Never lay shrubs before a swine”). Cast like a moral from Aesop, it almost surely comes from that famous piece of Biblical advice (Matthew 7:6): “… neither cast ye your pearls before swine….” But I was wrong before, so enlighten me, dear readers, if my recollection is faulty or completely ignorant. Still, I’m willing to bet this is not a Pokémon reference!

Finally, let’s talk about roads. Now, perhaps they don’t have many roundabouts where Jules Rivera lives. However, a roundabout is meant to incorporate roads that cross each other to facilitate safer driving and resolve problem intersections. In this case, the roundabout borders a crossing road. If this is a traffic roundabout, it has to be the most ineptly and worthless roundabout I’ve ever seen. If this is a pedestrian roundabout, then why? And why does it lay open to that road?

Okay, this completes a week back with Cherry. If Rivera keeps to form, we are bound to return to Crazy Land and Mark’s outrageous activities.