A straw tractor beside the pumpkin was also destroyed in the fire, which Hilger said erupted shortly after the 3:30 a.m. departure of an Allen County Sheriff's Department deputy from the market.

Hilger said it took about 3,500 bales of straw to make the pumpkin which, at 30 feet tall and 50 feet wide, was declared the "World's Largest Pumpkin" by a banner. It took two weeks and about $10,000 to construct.

The benign creation bestowed its welcoming grin on everyone, including the estimated 50,000 visitors Hilger said the market hosted in October. Some of those visitors came from as far away as Michigan, Illinois and even Texas.

Had the pumpkin not been destroyed, it would have been transformed into a giant strawberry to market the start of strawberry season next year, Hilger said.

A pair of rare Enigma machines used in the Spanish Civil War has been given to the head of GCHQ, Britain's communications intelligence agency. The machines - only recently discovered in Spain - fill in a missing chapter in the history of British code-breaking, paving the way for crucial successes in World War II.

A non-commissioned officer found the machines almost by chance, only a few years ago, in a secret room at the Spanish Ministry of Defence in Madrid.

"Nobody entered there because it was very secret," says Felix Sanz, the director of Spain's intelligence service.

"And one day somebody said 'Well if it is so secret, perhaps there is something secret inside.' They entered and saw a small office where all the encryption was produced during not only the civil war but in the years right afterwards."

Inside were around two dozen historic Enigma machines.

This caper is equal parts surreal and arboreal: the case of the kidnapped Stanford Tree.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 17, someone broke into the Stanford Band Shak, and made off with the 10-foot-tall, 45-pound costume of the school mascot. Almost immediately campus police ruled out the Symbionese Liberation Army. Instead they looked across San Francisco Bay to Berkeley and hated Pac-10 rival Cal. "There is nothing about this that's a joke," said Stanford police captain Raoul Niemeyer, who was treating the prank as a felony. "You do the crime, you do the time."

Six days passed without a lead. Or a leaf. Law enforcement officials at both schools were stumped. Junior Chris Henderson, the debarked mascot, showed symptoms of an identity crisis by issuing a press release that stated, in part, "I am the Tree. Me." Cal chancellor Robert Berdahl set a midnight Oct. 28 deadline for the Tree's return, no questions asked; after that he would put Oski the Bear, the Cal mascot, under lair arrest as an act of good faith.

The Tree was returned to Palo Alto undamaged, but last Saturday during halftime of the Stanford-USC game, the Cardinal band used a tree shredder to destroy the stolen mascot because it had been "contaminated." A new Tree was unveiled, but it will have to watch its bark when it visits Berkeley. The last time the Big Game was played at Memorial Stadium, in 1996, Cal students stormed the field and literally tore the Tree costume limb from limb.