A few things recently happened, making it a bit of a problem wondering if things were going well. In rained a lot. This just makes it hard for the household to do outdoor work. Then the ground got saturated. The chickens were knee deep in water (a chicken's knees, not mine), and the ground in the barn the hens are housed, caved in, filling the rat holes with water.

A high tide caused the septic tank to back up. Crud was found in the bath tubs. Toilets didn't drain. The smell was bad.

We got someone to clean out the tank, but the crud would not flow. The man was not available to tell him this, as he cleared it out while we were not present, and he was attending a funeral and was not readily available.

On Good Friday I took off in the dark to go to work. I put up my high beams, hoping to see a few deer that munch on the crops planted across the road.

I saw the mailbox, flattened. Not just baseballed off the pole, but flat. Run over and thinned and compressed. I wondered if STAND BY ME had been shown again on cable.

We phoned the police. I was at work, Giani had decided to crawl under the house to see if any of the pipes had broken a strap and were dangling. (a "v" crook prevents drainage).

The police came, and Giani was under the house. She heard the noise, crawled out with a face mask on, covered with dust and began talking to the cop. The cat vanished into the crawlspace.

Several other mailboxes were hammered, but ours was spectaculair in its demise. Did we have any suspects? Yes, we named the jerk, and the name was taken down with the hope he would at least be hassled and the cops would discover that his mailing address was a fake.

Another day in paradise.

The pipes were flowing the next day. We got the cat out by pretending to open a can.