Behold, I show you a mystery

Bhut Jolokia peppers are the third hottest peppers in the world. Up until December of last year, it was confirmed as the hottest pepper in the world, but two new hybrids have since come along. Still, it's pretty hot. ;)

My brother Sam has guarded his Bhut Jolokia pepper seeds and painstakingly planted some when we got here. Out of the four he planted, only one lasted long enough to be transplanted into a larger pot. That one pepper plant has had a hard life, seeing as it has to live in a certain dog's territory - a certain dog who thinks it is her duty to eat every living thing in sight. But once the plant grew to a certain height, the dog seemed to leave it alone, and then it flourished.

By the time the pepper plant was about 30 inches high, it was covered in pretty little white flowers, the beginnings of the Bhut Jolokia pepper. Sam was so excited! If each of those flowers produced one pepper, he'd have enough heat to supply the entire city of Francistown. A little bit goes a long way when it comes to the Bhut Jolokia. Soon one little baby pepper was growing and all the other flowers looked promising.

Then we went to South Africa for one week and the poor little pepper plant suffered in the heat and very dry weather. When we returned, all the flowers had fallen off and half of the leaves were crispy brown. Sam trimmed, watered, and babied the plant until it perked back up. That one little baby pepper was still hanging on, now almost full size. All we had to do was wait for it to ripen. Even just one pepper would help him make a large batch of very hot sauce.

This morning, I saw the pepper basking in the sun. At lunch, Sam pulled aside the curtain in the hallway to check on his little Bhut Jolokia. It was gone! There was the stem, with the raw edge where the pepper had been freshly snapped off. He searched all around the plant, to no avail.

And therein lies the mystery. What happened to the Bhut Jolokia? We may never know.

The assumed culprit, of course, is the dog. But we don't think she ate it, because I'm sure we would have heard her pacing around for hours, whining at the burn in her mouth, drinking buckets of water. So that only leaves us to assume that she buried it, which is what she does with all contraband items she steals (car washing rags from the garage are her favorites). But her hiding places are many, and finding a buried bright red dishtowel is easier to unearth than a small, green pepper.

Who knows? Maybe one day we'll go outside and there will be another little Bhut Jolokia plant, growing in some unusual spot, planted by a Rottweiler.