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]