The Rogue Garbage Bin Case

• Mira Love, Grade 5, Good Shepherd Lutheran College
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Top Secret 2016' competition

“Wheelie bins are having tantrums!” says distressed driver, Mike McWilliams.
Around four am on Monday, a wheelie bin jumped off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, smashing the windscreen of Mike McWilliams’ Subaru. Fortunately, nobody was injured.
“My wheelie bin was minding its own business when I went to bed!” cried Mrs. Bumble. “Next I know, it’s leapt straight off the old Sydney Harbour Bridge!”
The radio crackled to a stop.
We sat in stunned silence, before Mum burst out laughing.
Ben, one of my twin baby brothers screams, “Cookie in the bin!”
“This is my last resort...” I squeeze out the voice of the frustrated wheelie bin, between giggles: “The thunder cookie! Thirty years this cookie lurked inside me...”
We’re all rolling on the floor, laughing...
CRASH!
An empty can of baked beans rolls in through the open door. We jump up in fright.
Ben and George start crying.
I go to investigate cautiously.
My heart sinks immediately. Our green garbage bin has smashed the front of dad’s new Mazda.
Dad’s out mowing today. He won’t be very happy to find the front of his peach coloured car smashed up.
“Mum... I think our dustbin has gone mad-” I was cut short by an extremely loud groan.
Mum clutched her heart and wailed, “The wheelie bin hasn’t robbed us, has it?” She was playing around, because she was wearing a wide grin.
“No, Mum. You’d better see what it has done.”
I walk outside. Mum follows. She stands there with her mouth open, staring at this untimely sight.
We return to the house. My sister, Louise comes down the stairs with her fake monocle and announces:
“I shall investigate the tragedy of Dads car...”
Sometimes, even though she is one year older than me, I wonder whether I have more sense than Louise...
Dad walks in, steaming: “Who ‘supposedly’ decided to throw the garbage bin on top of my new car and ruin it?”
He is now really red, which is a kind of warning system. First he goes red; then he steams; then he goes purple; then he goes white-hot. It’s a bit scary!
Mum tries to explain. She gets him a cup of tea and gives him a legendary Whittaker’s coconut bar to calm him down. She tells him about Mike McWilliams and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and then about his Mazda. Dad bursts out laughing, just as we did!
Dad sets me on the task of finding out what’s making the garbage bins act so strangely.
I’ve named it “The Rogue Garbage Bin Case”.
It took me three days to close the case.
Within those three days, another five garbage bins attacked! Five neighbours who forgot to bring in their bins, suffered bin-bangs!
Dad agreed to break his “no TV at dinner” rule.
“National Alert! Garbage bins left on the street too long, are having hissy fits,” I announced on the Seven O’clock News on National Television.