THE GREAT FRENCH FRY MYSTERY

When an A&W takeout bag appeared on my neighbour’s porch in the middle of the night—followed by another, then another—I became obsessed with solving a fast food whodunit that was as baffling as it was beguiling

- BY HARLEY RUSTAD

IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, a Wednesday in early April, when the first bag of A&W french fries was deposited on my neighbour's porch. Nobody saw who put it there, but when my neighbour opened her door to get her mail the following morning, there it was—a fast food bag crumpled up at the foot of her white wooden bench. She hadn't ordered any A&W french fries in the middle of the night, and she wasn’t the one who had eaten them either.

The first bag was a mild curiosity. But the next morning my neighbour found another one on her porch, this time with a few fries still inside. She texted me and my wife in a group chat. “So some guy named Rodolphe keeps eating his A&W lunch on my porch,” she typed. “Have any of you seen him?” I joked that I would put our two young kids on neighbourhood watch and sent her a video of them staring out the window, looking for someone eating french fries. “That’s scary!” my much more compassionate wife texted back. “How do you know his name?” Because, my neighbour replied, it was written in black Sharpie on both bags: Rodolphe.

Friday morning. Another mostly eaten bag of A&W french fries had appeared on her porch. The third night in a row. Rodolphe again. The following evening, in an attempt to make her space less inviting, my neighbour turned her bench around to face the house. Maybe that would be enough of a deterrent.

On Saturday morning, as I was about to take my kids to the park, I stepped outside to check the weather and glanced across the gap between our houses. My neighbour's bench was still facing the wall, but underneath it was yet another brown A&W bag. I texted her a video. “You have to be fucking kidding me,” she replied. “I am going to check if it’s Rodolphe.” Almost immediately, she texted back a photo: “Rodolphe” scrawled in black Sharpie across the brown paper bag. The mysterious midnight french fry eater had struck again.