SAM SNAIL IS ON THE CASE

A private detective needs to sleep with one eye open. Sam Snail had learned this from experience. He had spent many hours on cases when he was on the force where he had to be very alert. You never knew where danger may come from. And now that he was a P.I. he was really on his own and had to be doubly on the lookout. So, the morning that Little Billy burst into his office he immediately threw all his training into the job at hand.
From what he could initially gather from the excited and sweaty little cricket before him, there had apparently been a brutal murder down on the trail to the river. Little Billy and Latimer Beetle had been on route to meet Louise Beetle at the swimming hole, when they had stumbled upon a grisly scene. It was the dismembered body of a large bug of some variety. All traces of identification had been removed and discarded somewhere apart from the body that lay before them.
Little Billy was shocked by what he saw but reacted nowhere near as much as Latimer. Billy finally looked away from the body and towards Latimer who was at this moment bent down over a twig retching violently. He finished retching, turned towards Billy and as his eyes rolled to the back of his head, he passed out cold on the ground.
‘Oh, great,’ thought Billy. ’Now I have two problems.’ He decided to drag Latimer away from the crime scene and waved some skunkweed under his nose to revive him. When he had Latimer calmed down he told him to stay put and he would go for help.
The first nest he came across was Sam Snails detective agency, so now you know why he was there. Sam took it all in and after much deliberation decided that they should return to the crime scene and investigate. All this takes time because Sam Snail is slow and methodical as you might guess.
They finally got to the spot where the body lay. It had obviously endured much trauma during it’s demise and must have been there quite a while. Sam could determine this because the body was swollen and wrinkled by being left on the cold wet ground. He had Little Billy help him secure the crime scene so that the crowd that had gathered would not disturb any evidence. He then sent one of the speedier bugs to run back to the meadow and get the police and a ladybug cart to haul the body back for the medical examiner.
‘What the heck!!’ Little Bobby Fenimore took a closer look at the ground. “Boy, it didn’t take those bugs long to find that raisin I dropped earlier.”