Meeting Porch · The Shanna Files · Story Six · Snot Nose Pig Patrol

The Case of the Dead Lincoln

Shanna went to Pennsylvania for a good time. Pennsylvania delivered. The trip home took twelve hours — and her one-year-old Lincoln chose that exact moment to play dead.

A standalone story built from Shanna’s own Facebook dispatches, September 2026 · About a 5-minute read

Every good patrol has someone out in the field. Ever since the Golden Snout Awards made Shanna the Patrol’s official Fifth Pig, her Facebook page has doubled as a field-report wire: part travel diary, part family bulletin, part evidence locker. Most weeks it is birthday wishes, Steelers news, pool weather, and proof that Florida keeps her busy.

Then came the September report — the one that started like a homecoming and ended like a mystery novel.

First dispatch: Pittsburgh in a few hours

On the morning of Friday, September 18, Shanna announced she was headed for Pittsburgh. Her friends did what friends do: wished her safe travels, asked how long she would be home, and — in the finest tradition of important travel advice — reminded her not to forget the Pizza Wagon. The Patrol opened a sub-file for the Pizza Wagon, labeled it URGENT, and promptly lost it under a snack wrapper. Some mysteries are not ready to be solved.

Shanna was born for this trip. Uniontown is her hometown; Fort Myers is home now. Pennsylvania is where the people are, where the Steelers are, where fall shows up on schedule. She went, she visited, she had — by her own later report — a lovely time with everyone.

From the field report

Her Pennsylvania recap thanked everyone for the fun and said the visit went by the way good visits always do: too fast. The Patrol finds no evidence of a boring minute and has closed that portion of the investigation.

Then came the twelve hours

Every trip has two halves. The going half runs on anticipation. The coming-home half runs on airport clocks.

Shanna’s trip home took twelve hours. Twelve. Long enough for a layover in Baltimore to earn its own line in her report — and long enough for her to wonder, in writing, whether that Baltimore layover had been a bad omen.

The four Snot Nose Pigs waiting in an airport beside a giant clock, Yellow asleep on a suitcase — The Patrol re-creates hour nine of twelve. Yellow’s investigation technique is called “resting his eyes.”

The Patrol has reviewed the omen question carefully. Blue counted the twelve hours twice and got twelve both times, which he considers suspicious. Yellow slept through the middle six and woke up convinced the trip was “basically a nap.” Red maintains that any layover long enough to finish airport snacks twice is legally a second vacation. Rainbow, who carries the paperwork, filed the Baltimore stop under Possible Omen — Unproven, which is where the Patrol keeps everything it cannot explain but refuses to forget.

At long last: Fort Myers. Home. Her own driveway. The end of the story.

Except the Lincoln had other plans.

The driveway scene

Waiting at home was Shanna’s Lincoln — one year old, practically a puppy by car standards. And it was, in her word, dead.

Not “acting funny.” Not “making a noise.” Dead. The kind of dead where a twelve-hour travel day ends with you standing in your own driveway, luggage in hand, having a staring contest with a car that has decided its one job — starting — is simply no longer of interest.

The four Snot Nose Pigs investigating a dark SUV that will not start in a Florida driveway — The Patrol’s driveway investigation. The Lincoln declined to comment. Yellow’s jumper cable, on inspection, appears to plug into a wall.

The Patrol investigated immediately, which is to say, eventually, after snacks.

Blue opened the official report and wrote down the facts, all three of them: twelve hours, one layover, one dead Lincoln. Then he underlined “one year old” three times, because a one-year-old car is supposed to have its whole life ahead of it.

Yellow volunteered to jump-start it and produced a cable that, on closer inspection, seems designed to plug into a household outlet. The Patrol has chosen to record this as “enthusiasm, misdirected.”

Red checked the tire, on the theory that cars are basically round things that roll, and if one part is round the whole case is halfway solved. The tire was fine. The car remained dead. Red has requested that both facts be entered into the record.

Rainbow asked the only question that mattered — the same one a friend asked on Shanna’s post that night: was it the battery? And here the file must be honest with you.

The Patrol’s official verdict

Cause of death: still unknown. Shanna’s report doesn’t say, the comments don’t settle it, and the Patrol does not invent evidence — that is the one rule, along with “snacks first.”

What the Patrol can certify: the Pennsylvania half of the trip was lovely, the trip home was twelve hours long, Baltimore remains a person of interest, and no welcome home has ever been staged quite like a brand-new car refusing to wake up for it.

The Lincoln is hereby awarded the Golden Snout for Most Dramatic Welcome Home. Shanna receives the Patrol’s certificate of survival: Endured twelve hours, came home anyway.

Why this file stays open

Because the best family stories are the small ones with an unsolved middle. Somewhere between the Pittsburgh send-off and the Fort Myers driveway, a one-year-old Lincoln quietly quit, and nobody — not the traveler, not her friends, not four extremely qualified pigs — can say exactly why.

The Patrol will update this file if the battery is ever convicted.

More in Shanna’s field-report file

The Pool UFO (July 17): A light over Shanna’s pool looked so much like a UFO landing that, after a rough week, she admitted she was half-hoping they would take her with them. A friend advised against it. Case pending.
Steelers Claus (September 13): Her best friend arrived at the door playing Steelers Claus, delivering a very early birthday gift — the Steelers bathing suit Shanna could never find. It arrived right in time for the first Steelers game.
The Collinsworth Shirt (September 27): Another early birthday gift, a shirt with a pointed message for a certain broadcaster. The Patrol takes no position. The shirt takes several.

Story notes: Built from Shanna Kensinger’s Facebook posts — especially September 18 and September 22, 2026, with the extras above from July 17 and September 13 and 27, 2026. The trip to Pennsylvania, the twelve-hour trip home, the Baltimore layover, and the one-year-old Lincoln being dead on arrival are as she reported them. The pig dialogue, investigation, and awards are the Patrol’s invention, as usual. If you know why the Lincoln died, the Patrol is accepting tips and snacks.