Satire: Why pumpkin can only protect the yellow pulp but not eat it

Google is amazing, ho!
Just type “books about pumpkin” and see what you will get. The Ugly Pumpkin, The Pumpkin Book, Pumpkin Trouble, It’s Pumpkin Time… There are so many out there that you will be amazed at how the world runs on pumpkins – including the small ones that think they have become big enough to feed clans beyond that of the farmer.
One of the best of the pumpkin lot is Steve Kroll’s The Biggest Ever Pumpkin series. A sneak peek into the 2007 edition of The New York Times bestseller is very telling.

Two mice take care of the same pumpkin, one during the day and one at night. But they both have two very different plans for the pumpkin. 
Let’s call the house mouse the Spotted One and the garden mouse in the wild who works the night shift is the new arrival in the mix, Mawono Batti.
Can both the Spotted One and Mawono Batti mice get what they want, or will they be angry when they realise they must share the pumpkin they have worked so hard to grow into the biggest pumpkin ever?
And that is where the emphasis gets us to a subplot straight from Nakasero Market.

Loud noises are heard over sirens and whatnot reminding Mawono Batti, the mouse who really does not belong to the grand scheme of the family project, that he is just a stranger and must not think that by being called to eat some, he has arrived and become bona fide.
But Mawono Batti thinks his legendary sweet mouth can talk him into convincing the Spotted One to accept any co-sharing agreement, moreover where he starts to shout that the biggest pumpkin ever, one raised for 36 years, can be passed for whoever has the best appetite to eat.
“I have been a pumpkin farmer long enough to judge who is honest and who is dishonest. I can state without any fear of contradiction that some of my fellow mice leaders are incurably dishonest and that is why they’re unfit to lead change,” Mawono Batti recently tweeted.

Now, some clan elders from the house mouse’s Rwaki-something are suspecting that the pulp (also called meat) of the biggest pumpkin ever has been changing colours whenever Mawono Batti rolls his glib tongue to water it at night.
The pulp, according to the pumpkin nook, is the yummy part of the pumpkin that you use to cook with, and to make literally hundreds of tasty recipes and treats. Naturally, it is supposed to be yellow however green the outer coating is.
As confirmed by Dr Kasenene, you can use pumpkin in everything from main courses to desserts, ice cream and even beer. 

And the last use is the scary bit because ever since Mawono Batti was invited in and promised things like a green-suited ambassador to China, the house mouse has been seeing its grown-up offspring behave strangely – in a way that can threaten efforts to sustain the nutritional value of the pulp in The Biggest Pumpkin Ever.
So the house mouse has made it very clear for all that the wild mouse can only water the pumpkin but he cannot start thinking of making the pulp change colours.
Meanwhile, in The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, Kroll must have meant to show the value of working together and how two ideas don’t always have to be opposing. And that is well demonstrated by the Spotted One when it invited the Mawono Batti mouse to the dining table.
But while Kroll suggests that the pumpkin would never have gotten so big if both the Spotted One and Mawono Batti hadn’t taken care of it, the house mouse cannot agree with such a notion.

Already, the wild mouse has been made to understand that the pumpkin agreement he took care of wasn’t his at all, which, needless to remind the small mouse from outside, sends a conflicting message about taking or using things that don’t belong to you.
Put bluntly, the green coating of the pumpkin can only protect the yellow pulp but both the coating and the wild mouse cannot eat it, however good they take care of the nutritious thing.

Disclaimer: This is a parody column