Seems to me you should do #5, then #2, then #4, before finishing with either #3 or #1 at your preference.

Before eating, though, if that's the way you're headed, I think you ought to cut into it to ensure that it's not filled with thousands of tiny spiders.

If it starts crawling across the counter like the steak in Poltergeist, it's time to run away real fast and contact a physic from an undisclosed location.

Or you could always shoot for # 2 on the list. That one gets my vote.

I left my lunch (and dinner and tomorrow's breakfast) at home and I'm hungry. Thus, I vote for #4.

I should have mentioned that when cutting it open to check for thousands of tiny spiders, you should do so in one of those isolation boxes with the gloves you stick your hands into from the outside. For safety.

FLOG: Definitely a great idea, if a bit too much work. Also: I ain't afraid of no spiders.

Brandon: That's what I'm leaning towards too. I should wait until Andy reads this post to put this one over the top.

Lewis: Damn! I forgot you knew I had a blog.

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000507.php

Mutant Strawberry, meet Satanic Lemon.

As it looks rather like a mushroom cloud, I'm inclined to argue for some combination of 2) and 5).

Brandon: Very, very nice. It reminds me of the citrus commonly known as Buddha's Hand.

Bryan: I was thinking along the exact same lines. Burnt mold ... yum!

I hope that my vote has not come too late and the the strawberry has yet to meet its fate.

I'm definitely in favor of #2 as the ultimate fate, but I'm afraid that if that route was taken immediately you would have missed out on an opportunity for some fun (and the moisture in the strawberry would mean that it wouldn't burn very well). Hence, I'm in favor of some time-lapse photography a la #5. I think a series of 5 or 6 well-chosen images would be an easier sell to the museum than a single image in which the mold may have completely consumed the strawberry, making it unrecognizable. The final image in the series would of course be the torching of the moldy strawberry. I'm sure that your officemate would be kind enough to visit the museum exhibition and would not mind having missed out on the real thing. Simply running it over with your car wouldn't be all that exciting. You'd just have a squished strawberry then. If you insisted on crushing it, I think that a manual (hand or head) crushing would be more satisfying. And as for eating it, do you really want to have 3-headed children?

May I add a 6th option? Mail it to President Bush along with a manifesto extolling the bounteous virtues of genetically-modified foods.

This reminds me of a mutant strawberry I once had that had not just the normal green leaves on top but also had 3 rings of green leaves emanating from the sides of the strawberry. I ate it. I'm going to have 3-headed children.

art museum / contest, whatever.

A three-headed child named Pedro Brutus McCrumblecake McNguyen Junior?!? I'm in! Thankfully, we were all waiting for you esteemed opinion wilderness. I guess I have no choice but to let the strawberry mold, take pictures of it while it's molding, and ultimately torch the thing. Stay tuned!

Woo hoo! I'm looking forward to the updates.