FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for November 17, 2021

Hop to it, Peter. The leaves won’t rake themselves.

Jason will get raked over something too

Our oaks still have plenty of leaves on them. I’m starting a betting pool as to which will happen first. The last oak leaf falls or we get a snow storm.

I have two pecan trees in my yard and the leaves don’t start falling in mass until around Thanksgiving. Good chance I’ll be raking them in the snow.

I do the same thing. I wait until 90% of the leaves have fallen. We are close to that now and the weather will be nice on the weekend so I guess I am as close as I can get.

Shades of O. Henry!

There were a few variations of this strip over time, as I can recall.

He could have painted it on (see O. Henry)

Hey Pete, Nate is doing some hard time raking, he will be by shorty.

waiting for “all the leaves to fall” makes the job harder and more unpleasant than cleaning them up as they fall. Depending on the overall climate where you live the fallen leaves can dry out and become crumbly so they break into millions of pieces of confetti when you try to clean them up, or if it’s more humid then the fallen leaves can become waterlogged and start rotting, and small animals will almost certainly start nesting under them so your chore will become smellier, grosser, and physically harder as the waterlogged leaves will stick together and be harder to lift

We never rake leaves, the wind takes care of the problem for us. We’re supposed to have 40+ mph winds over the next 3 days which will blow all the leaves into the next county.

For once, Roger isn’t a fool.

“Last Leaf” by O. Henry (1907): It’s a very short story you can read online if you like overly sentimental stuff.

I’m trying to decide what Peter is eating. I think it is a potato chip, the kind with the ridges (can’t remember what that style is – not thinking of a brand name). He also has what is probably a cola of known brand name.