Rivera side-slipped us back into Cherry’s Runaway Peacock story, while still on the golf course. As you may recall, she popped up the Saturday before, in the middle of the Trail-Chedderson Slapfest, along with the errant peacock. The fight immediately stopped and the peacock disappeared. Mark volunteered to help Cherry chase it down, the pollution fight, seemingly forgotten.
Then we cut to a scene of Honest Ernest with a butterfly net trying to catch the peacock and failing. Comparisons to “Coyote and Roadrunner” were obvious. At least Rivera showed good taste in what she borrowed from.
When Ernest complained about Mark and Cherry trying to hog credit for catching the bird, they assured him they didn’t care. It didn’t take Mark long to come up with a way to trap the peafowl using sticks, Happy’s golf club, and a granola bar that Cherry happened to have. Exactly how the trap worked is not really explained, but the bird was considerate enough to wander into it. Honest Ernest grabbed the trapped bird and ran off to impress Violet with his capture. Exciting stuff.
The only thing I’ll add is that Rivera may be throwing us a curveball. The peacock shown and trapped this week did not exhibit the long tail that the (male) peacock originally displayed. Either Rivera forgot that “subtle” distinction when she drew the bird or she is playing off the fact that there are “feral” peacocks loose in this country. So it is possible that they trapped the wrong bird (a female in this case) which will backfire when Honest Ernest returns it and claims credit. This could be the best ending yet for one of Cherry’s stories.
For sure, I thought that Rivera would create her custom title panel using mouse droppings to spell out the title. Seemed obvious to me! Well, I read up on hantavirus and, frankly, I’m pretty bothered, especially as there is no specific treatment (cure) or vaccine against it; and fatality rates go as high as 50%! Uffa! Sure, it may be rare and mostly in western states, but that’s not the same as “non-existent.” We get an occasional mouse, especially in the Winter. I’m doubling the mouse traps this year. Maybe get a cat or two.
I see it now: Mighty Mouse was really a foreign agent, sent here to spread hantavirus under the ruse of “coming to save the day.”
The Daily Trail 
I like your proposed plot twist where Honest Ernest is busted trying to claim credit for returning a female peafowl, but I think Jules was simply lazy in omitting the tail feathers earlier in the week. The distinct tail feather “eyes” returned on Saturday in the back of the stick cage.
To paraphrase Hanlon’s Razor — Never attribute to clever that which is adequately explained by lazy.
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Excellent! Looks like you are correct, Daniel. I should have zoomed in, as I normally do. I must have gotten lazy, myself, or swept up by my own “clever” plot twist theory. But, “the Eyes have it!” Say, that would have made a good blog title.
Still, it seems very odd—even for Rivera—to be too lazy to draw the stereotypically most important feature of a peacock in those prior days. But how else to explain it?
I do think that Mark’s so-called trap was ridiculous, and in real life could only result in harming the bird and destroying its tailfeathers.
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