Where in the world is Rodney the Ram?

Dylan Hostetter, Opinions and Humor Editor

It was a hot, sticky August day and I had just woken from a nap in the middle of class. My professors were never happy with my narcoleptic tendencies, but what did I care — I’m a private detective. I’m the last line of defense between order and chaos, and also I stayed up past my bedtime.

Rodney the Ram was missing. The case had taken over my mind, I just couldn’t crack it. He was a staple around campus — giving uncomfortable side-hugs to incoming freshmen and staring down crowds of sports games with those cold, unfeeling eyes of his. For all anyone knew, that could have all been over.

It is not every day a case like this comes across my desk. I spend most of my time surveilling cheating boyfriends or pretty much anything that gives me an excuse to use my binoculars — those things were expensive. 

I wasn’t new to the detective game, either — just last semester I exposed an underground racketeering operation. I caught a couple of students selling stolen tennis rackets behind the gym before they jumped me and beat me with the merchandise. You’ll never catch me envying a tennis ball ever again, that’s for sure.

The VCU Police had said nothing about the Ram’s disappearance. This worried me — could it have been an inside job? Why would VCU want to silence their own mascot? Were Rice Krispies Treats really getting smaller, or were my hands just getting bigger? Maybe that was a question for another day.

I approached my one connection within the force later that night. He was an odd sight, sitting alone on a street corner atop a shiny new chrome bicycle.

“How’d you afford the new wheels, Jay?” I asked him. “Taking bribes again?”

“What’s it to you, gumshoe?” he asked. He often dismissed me this way, but calling me “gumshoe” was just plain offensive. You step in gum once and it sticks with you for the rest of your life. 

“Don’t worry, I’m not a jealous man, just an honest one,” I said. “Unlike you, I like to do my job.”“Oh yeah? And what job would that be?” he said with a sly smile. I had to temper my emotions — the last time I punched a man with a badge I got banned from a Six Flags.

“Cut the nonsense, you know the Ram is missing,” I said, flicking his badge. “Just because I don’t have one of those shiny shields pinned to my shirt doesn’t mean I’m not going to do something about it.”

He said he hadn’t heard anything about a missing Ram, and I didn’t know whether to believe him or not — I never was good at telling when people were lying. One time somebody told me that if your hand is bigger than your face you may have cancer, and when I put it up to check, he kicked me in the groin. That’s my fault for surrounding myself with the wrong crowd.

I’ve learned many lessons in my time as a private eye, enough to know I wasn’t going to get any information out of him. I needed something out of this interaction though, so I tipped him off his bike and ran like the wind. A cheap laugh is nothing compared to the satisfaction of solving a case, but I have to take what I can get. 

I just couldn’t see how no one knew anything about Rodney. I couldn’t really see anything because it was dark outside — which is probably why I didn’t see the figure calling to me from the alleyway.

“Pssst! Hey, you in the trench coat and fedora,” the voice said. “You’re a private detective right?”

I was nervous to be summoned from a strange alley voice, but was happy the trench coat finally paid off as a fashion choice. I sweat away 12 gallons a day wearing this thing in the name of brand recognition.

I approached the alley to find a beautiful girl waiting there. You might call her a femme fatale, if you saw women as some sort of stock character archetype — which I of course do not. I’m an ally after all. I cried when Ruth Bader Ginsberg died.

I asked her what I could help her with, and she told me she had information. 

“What kind of information?”

“About the Ram,” she said.

“What Ram?” 

She was starting to get angry. “You know, the Ram.”

“The Los Angeles Rams?”

“No, Rodney the Ram!” 

Little did she know this was all a subtle detective trick to make sure she was on the level — I knew what she was talking about the whole time. You pick these tricks up if you stay on the job long enough. Contrary to what people say, I only pretend to be as dumb as I look. 

Before I could say anything else she began to slowly back into the darkness and whispered, “The compass points east.”

With my fast-acting private-eye brain I quickly decoded her message. Once outside the library and on the Compass, I began to walk east. It wasn’t long before I happened upon Monroe Park and the severed head of Rodney the Ram sitting on a park bench.

Well, severed may be the wrong adjective. I assumed it was severed before I learned Rodney the Ram was actually just a guy in a costume. Just because I’m a private investigator doesn’t mean I know everything. 

The guy in question was resting easy on the other side of the bench puffing on a watermelon-flavored vape.

“Rodney, where have you been?” I asked. 

He looked confused. “First of all, my name’s not Rodney. It’s Kevin,” said Rodney. I refuse to refer to him by this obviously fake alias.

“But you’ve been missing. I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Missing? I just took the day off, man,” he said. “What’s your problem anyway? What’s with the trench coat, and why are you so sweaty?”

Editor’s Note: The characters and events depicted in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.