night. Elizabeth slipped away in the autumn darkness and vanished.
Needless to say, when daylight came I desperately searched the
buildings, the yard, gardens, woods, and even the nearby river. I
called in a missing person report and the police looked as well. We
stopped searching after a week because there just wasn't any place
else to look. Then, into my kitchen, right in front of our round
eyes and gaping mouths, walked a smiling, pleasant, talkative young
woman who was quite sane.

She said, "Hello I'm Elizabeth! I'm sorry I was such a hassle last
week, and thank you for trying to take care of me so well. I was too
sick to know any better." She said she had gone out our back door
the week before and crawled under a pile of fallen leaves on the
ground in our back yard with a black tarp over them. We had looked
under the tarp at least fifty times during the days past, but never
thought to look under the leaves as well.

This amazing occurrence made my head go bong to say the least; it
was obvious that Elizabeth had not been 'schizophrenic' because of
her genetics, nor because of stress, nor malnutrition, nor
hypoglycemia, nor because of any of the causes of mental illness I
had previously learned to identify and rectify, but because of food
allergies. Elizabeth was spontaneously cured because she'd had
nothing to eat for a week. The composting pile of leaves hiding her
had produced enough heat to keep her warm at night and the heap
contained sufficient moisture to keep her from getting too
dehydrated. She looked wonderful, with clear shiny blue eyes, clear
skin with good color, though she was slightly slimmer than when I
had last seen her.