@Triibeard Thank you, my friend. The Sheriff has wisely abstained from the stronger ales and limited himself to a few sips of my evening drink. He has mumbled a few things about "sabotage" but was more concerned with hunting down RiffRaff for now.

@Rudiger Thanks, we are having great fun with the little yellow faced visitor.

@mpernest He sure does, a true international beardsman.

Today I couldn´t hold back my intrepid officer any longer and after agreeing that the the local premises were rascal free for now we decided to follow the oily footprints through the inner city.
Our local town has a fully intact medieval city core and we discovered tiny oil footprints that dissappeared in the narrow streets of old Bremen.

We started at the beginning, trying to ask some of the locals for support and whether they had spotted anything out of the ordinary.


image

The Town Musicians of Bremen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Musicians_of_Bremen provided us with the first clue.
It was difficult for Triibeard to get the donkeys attention, but eventually he noticed the tiny beardsman at his hoof and - after complimenting him on his magnificent beard - told him that a shadowy figure was seen by the cat earlier rolling tiny barrels towards Bremen Cathedral. So that´s where we went next but whom could we ask for help there?

image

Luckily, one of the lions in front of the Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremen_Cathedral had seen the rascal that very night. He told us that he went exactly where he was looking at, but wouldn´t move one bit to point us there, as he didn´t want to interrupt his vigil for even the tiniest moment. Luckily, the Sheriff had a solution. He boldly climbed into the Lions very mouth and followed his gaze to the City Hall. Maybe one of the staff there could help us?

image

At the city hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremen_City_Hall it was another quadruped who assisted us in our search. While the knight of Bremens Heralds hadn´t noticed a thing, his steed (can you spot Triibeard at the hoof?) had noticed a rumbling of tiny beard oil flasks heading into Bremen´s narrow Böttcherstrasse.

image


So here we were. Finally we found traces of oil again, stumbling through the maze that is the Bötcherstrasse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6ttcherstra%C3%9Fe and it´s surrounding alleys (on the danger of turning this into where´s Waldo - can you spot the Sheriff?). The traces of oil went through the whole district until they finally ended at a fountain in a small niche.
 

image    image

It was the the local wildlife again, that gave us the final clue as to RiffRaffs whereabouts.
"Down the fountain and then into the canals?", the Sheriif gasped, "So he´s storing his loot underground!"

image

This stage of our search appeared to be over. We have tracked down the rascal to the local underground canals and have made lots of allies with the locals. Exhausted, but content we decided to refuel at a local Café and while the Sheriff was munching his way through a cookie, we began our plans to take the search underground....
 

I have written a bit about different beard products here:
moustache cups and mugsbeard brushes and combs
beard literature | simple homemade beard oil

my beard journey | my bart * aber herzlich beard oil | Bartöl store (external link, not affiliated with or endorsed by beard board)