The one that got away?

Desi, at miaculpa, has a regular feature called "Caption this", in which she invites readers to provide a caption to a news-photo. I don't know if she realizes that the sequence of photos over the past several months have a story to tell. Here it is, laid out for you. I should really have tried to put comic-strip borders and so on, but I don't know how.

Caption this!