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]