Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

The best thing about moving (other than the slow tedious process that is unpacking), is getting to know your new neighborhood. Living five miles from town, we have fewer neighbors than we did before, but we do live in a cluster of four or five houses along the state highway between two towns and what we lack in quantity we seem to be making up for in entertainment value.

The first night in our new house, I was sitting in the living room in front of the yet-to-be curtained picture window when I noticed a flashing light coming from across the road. It seemed to be coming from very near but not actually from inside the neighbor's house--it was like a camera flash but it came every second or so. I looked at Hubby and said, "Do you think our new neighbor is communicating with aliens?"

The next morning, all was explained when I noticed a wooden lighthouse sitting in a flower bed next to the house. But as soon as one question was answered, more arose.

The man has ponies--lots of them. Sometimes there are as many as ten or fifteen in the pasture beside his house and sometimes there are only a few and some days there aren't any to be seen. There is a tiny shedlike structure at the top of the hill and a made-from-a-kit round steel building that looks like a giant metal meatloaf, so I assume that's where the "missing" ponies are, but the weirder thing about the ponies is that even though there are so many of them there are only two color patterns--one is a rich brown with a blondish mane and tail and the other is white with chocolate brown spots.

I'm pretty sure my neighbor is cloning ponies in that shed up on the hill.

In fact, I'm so positive that this is what's going on that I no longer even call them ponies--they're clonies.

And that lighthouse? It's beaming the results of his latest cloning efforts to scientists on some other planet.

I'm pretty sure.