It speaks!

Despite not having a visible mouth, and showing no capacity for speech in the past, the Jack Eldrod Ball has finally broken its silence.  (Unlike certain giant robots, the Ball has a grasp of all letters of the alphabet and therefore doesn't drop any in its communications.)  After years of following Mark around, perhaps it felt that it was time to finally begin to reveal the extent of its knowledge and its many secrets (or maybe this was just a fluke and it's been trying to conceal the fact that it could talk for years because the moment it starts it can no longer be viewed as the silent partner of this comic strip).  We will have to wait and see whether it will continue to speak, or whether it will fall silent once more, hoping that Mark, Pop, and Shelly will forget this outburst and not expect any more from it in the future.

Getting back to the comic, it turns out that Mark didn't need Pop and Shelly after all.  In fact, it appears as though they're the ones who need him.  Good thing Pop chose to drive his swamp buggy, otherwise Mark might have thought that someone else was in trouble and might not have investigated the abandoned vehicle (that, or he might have just decided to steal it to get back to the cabin).  His appearance seems to have also caused the Quail attack to be called off (who knew those little guys were so bloodthirsty), though with Salty and Sour still prowling the swamp, this potentially dangerous situation is far from over.