Guard your gourds, people. PhinneyWood reports there’s a squash shoplifter on the loose that just bagged the mother load: a 400-pound beast of a pumpkin that had hitherto surveilled the front entrance of the Greenwood Market at 3rd Avenue NW and NW 85th Street.The great pumpkin heist went down sometime over the course of last Wednesday night says a manager at the store who asked not to be identified. She tells DW that such a brazen theft has never happened before at the store. Another anonymous source tells PhinneyWood that the pumpkin is shaped like a “bean-bag chair” and to call the store at (206) 782-1610 if you see it. She also says that while the store is on the hook for the cost of the pumpkin, the loss is most painful to whatever farmer grew the freakish gourd, because they treasure the prized seeds.

“We always return those pumpkins to the farmers, because they need the seeds and use them to grow them next year,” she said. “In all the years we’ve been doing this, we’ve never had this happen.”Leads are few in the storefront caper, and given the grisly end that pumpkins traditionally come to at the hands of thieves, hope is thin that it will end up in something wholesome like a pie or a sweet bread.One thing’s for sure though, whoever stole the massive melon obviously didn’t watch Charlie Brown specials growing up, or they would have had the sense not to fuck with such a magnificent fruit. Tell ’em, Sally.