Apologies for the delay in getting part three out, we just FINALLY closed
on our new house!
 
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.....
 
Veeery slowly...Ping shifted the gear lever over to a shiny metal "U"
that had been scratched into the green paint long ago, by the dearly
missed Miss Lily Weasel, who had talents few weasels even understood.
Certainly not Ping, or Puma, who only knew that the "U" meant "Up"!
 
With a gentle bump and a slight rocking motion, the tiny front wheels
lifted up from the driveway gravel...they continued to lift a few feet
into the air until the tractor started tipping back on its enormous rear
wheels.  With a great crunching of driveway gravel the rear wheels, too,
finally left contact with the ground.  Ping tweaked the throttle again
and the tractor came level, then began to rise rapidly.
 
Puma jumped up to the seat with Ping and France and very soon they were
looking down on the roof of their house.  A minute more, and all the
house roofs in the neighbourhood were clustered beneath them like a giant
Whitman's Candy Sampler.  Squares, rectangles, odd, blocky shapes in
slightly different colors.  Some with asphalt shingles, some with tar
paper, some with cedar.  Here and there there were fluttering blue
blossoms of light where hoomins were watching television.  Their cars
looked like toys.
 
The lake came into view over the pines and Ping said "I want to see the
water!" and he steered for it after changing to a forward gear.  It was
so beautiful...there was just enough twilight left that a few reddened
clouds were reflected in the lake, as was the huge orange half moon.
France laughed with pure joy (yes, she actually does things like that
from time to time!) and Puma closed her eyes and let the cool air flow
over her fur and bend her whiskers.
 
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!
 
End Part Three
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 5297]