No, I'm sure the pile of Milk-Bone® dog snacks that Ella and I stumbled across in the park yesterday morning did not conceal a boobytrapped pit in the ground, nor a tripwire that would drop a steel cage around us, nor a noose that would tighten around our ankles and hoist us upside-down into the air. But I still wouldn't have let her go near it, even if it had interested her (which it did not).

I probably would have been suspicious at the best of times to find what looked like an entire giant-size box of Milk-Bones, complete with a coupon good for your next purchase, emptied out onto the snow. But we're in the midst of one of those neighborhood panics where citizen complaints have spurred the police into cracking down hard on owners who don't keep their dogs on-leash at the park. My first thought on seeing the pile of biscuits was that some angry person had poisoned them. The idea that someone was just trying to get rid of some extra dog treats before they went bad came in a distant second. Scooby-Doo jokes limped across the finish line in third.

It's no fun to have your walk in the park marred by the thought that someone might be upset and unbalanced enough to try to murder your dog at random. So I laughed it off, and I won't worry about it again until I see a tempting platter of roasted turkey and mashed potatoes sliding across the field on fishing line toward a suspiciously rustling bush.