Sometimes an investigation comes about obliquely. Such is the case of the contaminated swimming hole. This is like a Classic Mark Trail story. After getting shut out of a swimming afternoon, the Trails retired to Ranger Shaw’s backyard for an impromptu party. Some friendly questioning of Ranger Shaw failed to produce anything useful regarding the source of the lake’s contamination. This inspired Mark to take control of the situation and investigate on his own. Good thing, too, else we’d still be reading about Cherry and Violet looking for her mom’s runaway peacock!

Now, did Mark hop on the case immediately? He might have, but Happy Trail just happened to call and tell him about a new golf course opening up near Lost Forest. Mark immediately saw a connection to the lake contamination. Quick thinking like this saves a lot of unnecessary time spent researching and  scouting the area for possible causes. Since complexity and story depth are not a hallmark of most comic strips, including Mark Trail, we can count on the golf resort being the guilty party.

Anyway, before Mark could do anything on his own, Happy came up from Florida and showed up at the cabin! He invited (most of) the family to a weekend at the new golf resort, which he had just joined and booked rooms for everybody. Golfers can be a bit crazy, I reckon.

But it’s all very convenient for Mark, who now has a legitimate reason for showing up at the golf resort! And Rusty was thrilled to see Happy and get a chance to play in the resort’s water park. That should set him up really swell with his friends.

There may be a strategic reason to put the Peacock discussion here, in the middle of Mark’s two-week storyline rather than during Cherry’s week. But I don’t know what it is. Maybe just a scheduling issue at the comic syndicate. In any event, the composition and execution of the title panel today is well-conceived. The curious focus on reflection is explained in the strip. It’s an effective top-down view that includes different shading techniques that are rare in Rivera’s work.

I was not aware there were feral peacocks in the US, apparently due to careless pet owners and people of questionable character who deliberately release them into the environment. These feral peafowl seem to predominate in Florida (home to all manner of released exotic animals), Texas, and southern California. So if you live in the Midwest or Eastern Seaboard, you are probably not going to see any peacocks, except in a zoo.

And I’ll give Rivera credit today for not even trying to draw a peacock in full plumage. There are some paintings and drawings that pull it off, but in a comic strip’s limited format, it would be most difficult to try.