UGGH! Many apologies for not finishing up in a timely fashion, but with
moving I am *flat out*.
Alexandra
 
***********************************************************************
 
It was a *beautiful* night in central Massachusetts.  After weeks of
rain, a few dry days to enjoy summer.  The nights, though, were a special
delight.  The air cooled and softened into dusk.  A thin mist came up
from the surface of the lake, and the orange half moon was mirrored,
rippling, in the water.  The loon called a few times, and the birds all
went to sleep.  The fireflies came out and started flashing in the long
grass.  Swift, angular bats came out from their daytime places, and
swooped through the air, searching for mosquitos.  The air smelled of
pine, and garden lillies, and all the secret things that make up a
summer night.
 
It was a perfect night to take a tractor out flying.
 
When we left off.....
 
And that's when it zipped by, with a thin wavering whistle and a loud
"POP!" There was a flash of light not twenty feet behind them...
blue-white and very intense.  Puma's head turned at the whistle and she
just barely caught the flash out of the corner of her vision.  Most of
the flash she saw was actually reflected in the lake beneath them.
 
Ping yelled "DUDE!" and France, who had turned her head quickly enough to
be blinded by the flash yelled something nearly unforgivable in French
involving both parentage and hog excrement.
 
Just then, there was another one of those whistles, and it, too, was
*very* close!  All three tensed in expectation of another flash of light,
and sure enough it came...again blue-white and very intense.  Almost
immediately there was another whistle, but deeper in tone this time.
 
Ping yelled "INCOMING!" and took the tractor into a sharp bank to the
right.  Puma tried to shrink to her smallest possible size, and squeezed
her eyes tightly shut.  Nothing master Ho had ever taught her had
prepared her for being under enemy fire.  France screamed revenge in
her native tongue, and stood up on her back legs defiantly!
 
Then THOOMP!!!  The world flashed blue streamers that fell around
them gently, the ends flaming into a deep crimson.  THOOMP!  A
thousand-petaled flower of yellow streamers exploded just a hundred feet
in front of them, and sifted down to the lake's surface, the light dying
slowly.  A charred smell drifted in the air.
 
Puma was badly blinded, but she reached out with a paw and grabbed France
by one ear as the tractor's steep bank caused the little hedgehog to lose
her balance and risk tumbling into the lake, far, far below.  Teeth
gritted, Ping held the tractor in its turn, throttled up, and made a bee
line for home, and safety.
 
THWEE!  THWEE!  THWEE!  THWEE!  A cascade of bright white sparkling
trails exploded up from the the ground each giving off its own POP!, and
a blue-green ball of incandescence as it reached its maximum altitude.
 
As the tractor(going faster than Ping had *ever* driven before)
rattled and roared for home, Ping realized with horror that his whole
*neighbourhood* was the source of these explosions!  Nearly half of the
yards were sending up rockets of some sort, and there were clusters of
brightly colored flashed off in the distance in every direction he
looked.
 
The hoomins had gone MAD!!...
 
End Part Four
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 5300]