If you missed last week, your faithful MT blogger suffered in your place, but he’s happy to catch you up. Are you ready?

Our dogged duo (Olive and Rusty) wanted to gather more evidence against the Grungey Boys for their alleged damage to Lost Forest land by their covert lawnmower races. You might recall that our two good deed doers ran across the “Boys” while on a nature walk. The two were discovered by Honest Ernest (the ringleader), who tried to snatch a phone Olive was using to capture their surreptitious activity. Ernest tried to get rough with Olive and demanded the camera, only to wind up on the ground after a sharp right to the face. Zoom to this week.

Operating under a warning from Mark to not escalate the situation (that is, to not act like him), Olive and Rusty came up with another plan to get more evidence. They purchased a “trail cam” and installed it where the Grungey Boys play. When Olive and Rusty showed the video evidence they captured to Ranger Shaw, he responded that (for some reason) he had no enforcement powers in the unincorporated portions of Lost Forest. Personally, I found this surprising, as unincorporated land is usually protected by the county sheriff. Ranger Shaw could have brought him in, but did not. But why didn’t Shaw have jurisdiction if Lost Forest is some kind of preserve? Oh, the complexities of government jurisdictions!

Custom title panels are a hallmark of Rivera’s Sunday Mark Trail strips. The conception of today’s title is very good, though the execution is a bit slack. Anyway, it’s nice to see that Rivera can draw or copy realistic trees when called upon (panel 4). Would be nice if she could draw them in the regular panels, too.

Planting trees in downtowns is a good idea, if thoughtfully done. My city tried it a few time and failed. At one time they even created portable “parks” complete with shrubbery and seating that could be moved around downtown to give workers and customers a respite from the concrete.