The Territorial

Yesterday morning, the good folks of Yerington found themselves in a most inconvenient predicament, all because of an anonymous scoundrel with a telephonic contraption and a shortage of both scruples and good sense. At precisely 8:10 a.m., the Yerington Police Department, accompanied by the ever-dutiful Lyon County Sheriff’s deputies, descended upon Raley’s grocery store in response to a most unwelcome report of a bomb threat.

Now, the offending party—who remains as unidentified as a stray hat in a windstorm—had taken it upon himself to ring up the establishment and demand money, promising in return a most disagreeable experience in the form of a sudden and violent rearrangement of the store’s general structure. The store’s staff, not being of the mind to negotiate under such conditions, promptly summoned the authorities.

As it turns out, this particular brand of extortion was not a limited-time offer, as similar threats had been called into Raley’s stores over in California, suggesting that the culprit was either very ambitious or unoriginal. Regardless, customers and staff were ushered out of the store as the Consolidated Bomb Squad and Tahoe-Douglas Bomb Squad conducted a thorough search, no doubt overturning loaves of bread and peering suspiciously into barrels of pickles.

After much diligent sweeping, dusting, and peeking into corners, it was concluded that there was no bomb, no villain lurking in the soup aisle, and no cause for further alarm. The store resumed its regular operations, and the townspeople were free to return to the noble pursuit of selecting produce and debating the ripeness of melons.

As for the culprit, one can only hope that fate has an appropriate reckoning in store, perhaps involving a long and lonesome stretch spent contemplating the ill-advised nature of his choices.