I found a pumpkin under my daughter’s bed today. An actual used-to-be-alive pumpkin. It was one of those small pumpkins that you can use to make a centerpiece or something like that. She got it at a Fall Festival we went to in OCTOBER before Halloween. Valentine’s Day is on Saturday and I just found a pumpkin in her room.

In case you are interested, small un-carved pumpkins do not rot through their outer skins when kept in a temperature-controlled room for 4 months–a fact for which I am incredibly grateful. I shudder to think what might have been under there if I hadn’t noticed it for another 4 months. Ants? New baby pumpkins? A brown lump of goo? Yeeccchhhh.

I have a friend who once found a stash of food wrappers under her son’s bed. He had been sneaking granola bars or fig newtons or something like that and hiding the wrappers so his mom wouldn’t find them in the trash. She, too, was thankful she discovered them before the crumbs drew a slew of pests to nest under her boy’s bed.

I do look under the bed for clothes and toys, but the pumpkin was tucked up near the foot of the bed in the corner so unless I looked from the right angle (from the foot of the bed as close the wall as possible) I couldn’t see it. Consider this a public service announcement–go look under your kids’ beds. There could be produce under there.