Should the Iditarod committee decide to relocate their renown sledding event to the eastern United States--and under the present circumstances we can think of no reason why they should not--they would do well to consider our nation's capital as their new venue.
 
Little Jack Frost has had his merry way with we who are clustered 'round the 'ol Potomac, and, in a decades-long tradition, the local citizenry have responded with typical sang-froid and sophisticated grace. That is to say they have all become certifiable.
 
For some years there has been a steady decline in accommodations for the area's mentally disabled--a population that is significantly larger in the winter months--and local governments have addressed this woeful insufficiency by placing the seasonally afflicted in automobiles and loosing them upon the highways. In this manner the poor wretches have at least a roof over their heads--or, upon occasion--under their heads.
 
The debilitation was not limited solely to commuters. It seems that at the height of the emergency a number of beltway exits were sealed off by snowplows, preventing many government workers from getting to their jobs--a faux pas that coincidentally answered the silent but fervent prayers of millions of Americans.
 
But, on the silver-lined side, the apprentice avalanche was a welcome distraction from the continual drumbeat of news reporting felony opposition to our Beloved Leader and his possible (hee-hee) war against the nefarious Iraqi empire, which is bent on the total eradication of freedom, and is not very nice besides.
 
The liberal-controlled media boasted of anti-war demonstrations in virtually every civilized nation, as well as several villages along the Amazon River. Estimates by news media and administration officials (choose whichever you like) indicate that worldwide attendance at these events may have run well into the hundreds.
 
What worries us most, however, is the weather's effect on our local wildlife.
 
A few days ago, your W Team spent a frustrating day swaddling the windows and doors of Chez W with plastic sheeting and duct tape, as directed by Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge. No sooner had we completed the task than we learned that the bemused safety-meister had gone unaware that duct-tape is gas-permeable--a fact that places sharp constraints on its usefulness in a chemical attack.
 
The subsequently recommended Mylar tape proved far more efficacious. The one drawback being that our headquarters were now hermetically sealed and thus would, in relatively short time, cause our deaths by suffocation; an outcome that we suppose could be viewed as negligible, depending on one's perspective and whether one was inside or outside of the building.
 
By the late evening our anaerobic extinction was well underway, and our oxygen-starved brains were treating us to an abundance of phantasmal visions. The most vivid of these featured Mrs. Feeny scurrying from room to room, a broom held tightly in her crinkly hands, vigorously poking and prodding in corners and under the furniture. Gradually it dawned on us that this was not an hallucination.
 
Eventually the old lady's theater of operations migrated into the room where, unknown to us, we were busily expiring. This action doubtless saved our lives, sufficiently rousing us to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing. She responded with but a single word, "Mice!"
 
This was immediately accepted by all as a sensible explanation of her actions. The day was bitter and the snow extensive, and in such circumstance it was entirely possible the wee sleekit timorous beasties might return from their forage with empty lunch pails, and shortly thereafter pack their little valises and move in on us with the suddenness of in-laws.
 
While it was possible that the ancient lass' conclusions were in error we were reluctant to proceed on that assumption. Then too there was the fact that Feeny with broom in hand is not a sight to inspire a sense of well being. Inevitably one is led to think of the first act of Macbeth, or perhaps the more alarming scenes in the Wizard of Oz. In addition, as long-time readers of the present journal will understand, Mrs. Feeny is not a person of predictable disposition. Thus there was general agreement that the sooner we got that broom away from her the better.
 
And so it was an hour later that we opened our premises to one Algernon Piper, the founder and sovereign of Piper's Pest Patrol, the exterminating angel of the rodent race.
 
Despite his cachet, Piper was not a man of reassuring aspect. His worn and shabby clothing covered, it seemed, in several layers of soot, and his generally dazed manner, gave the impression of one who had arrived at our door via cannon.
 
"You th' folks got th' mice?" He asked.
 
In short order Piper and his assistant had covered the floors with an array of instruments and tools of intimidating and efficacious appearance. As his assistant fiddled with these, Piper busied himself going about the rooms tapping hither and thither on the walls, all the while intoning a barely audible stream of mantric utterance that seemed to be an endless repetition of the phrase "Mousies in the housey!"
 
Finally he fished from his coat pocket a stethoscope with which he listened intently to several places on the walls, saying "Uh huh. Uh huh." When finished he turned to us and said "Yep, you got 'em all right."
 
"Mice?' We said.
 
"Sure," he said.
 
"You could hear them?" we asked.
 
"Naw!" he said "That's where you got your problem. Didn't hear a peep."
 
"Well," we said, "How then do you know-- "
 
Piper explained to us that mice had only three "jobs," which (edited for reasons of decorum) included eating, procreating and avoiding humans. Employing these simple criteria, he maintained, it was possible to draw a distinction among failed and successful mice. "The ones you can hear is the dumb ones," he said, "The ones you can't is the smart ones."
 
Evidently ours were geniuses.
 
The problem with this analysis, we suggested, was that it did not allow for the possibility that there were no mice at all.
 
"They's always mice," he said.
 
"Even worse," he added, "is th' smart ones always knows where you's lookin' for 'em, so they is always at someplace you ain't."
 
Still, we pressed, how could he be sure that--
 
"Awww, they's lots a' signs a professional can spot," he said, "mouse droppin's, mouse holes, you name it."
 
But, we said, we had so far seen no droppings...
 
"Hunh!" he mused, "They must be holdin' it in."
 
...And, we added, no sign of mouse holes.
 
"Damn!" he exclaimed, "These bastids is tricky!"
 
At a loss for a response, we asked how many he thought there were.
 
"Oh...could be a hundred, could be a thousand, maybe more--It's hard to tell," he said, tapping again on the wall, "when you can't hear 'em."
 
We said nothing for a moment. There was something tantalizingly familiar about the situation.
 
"Thing is," he said, "You wanna get these suckers 'fore they start teamin' up with the rats."
 
With rats? We said. We thought the experts were of the opinion that mice and rats never associated--
 
"Look,' he said, a little exasperated, "I got professional operatives out there what seen 'em together lots a' times. Who you gonna believe, some 'expert' or professional operatives?"
 
Once again there seemed to be no good answer. How much, we asked, did he think there removal would cost? He gave us a withering look. "You wanna get rid a' mice, or you wanna save money?
 
In the end it seemed we had no choice. But Piper's proposed plan of action presented several difficulties. For one thing, there was a strong possibility that his attack on the presumptive rodents might drive them to take up residence with one or more of our neighbors, an outcome that would not necessarily result in wreathed smiles all around. For another, a key phase of the assault would have to be launched from the home of Mr. Constantine, our enormously difficult and venal next door neighbor.
 
Could he, we asked, at the end of the task at least provide us with some assurance or proof that it had been carried out successfully?
 
"Oh, sure," he said, making out an invoice, "...unless these turns out to be some a' them invisible mice."
 
Struck all but mute we sputtered, surely he didn't expect us to--
 
"Look," he interrupted, "They's a lots a' things you got to deal with in this world. You got stocks that're probably tankin' right this minute. The economy's goin' into th' dumper; your kids is goin' to rotten schools; prices is startin' to rise; when you gets to your job tomorrow, you might not work there no more--it could be anythin', you don't know. What I'm sayin' is no matter how you slice it, you gotta be worried about somethin'-- right?"
 
We nodded tentatively.
 
"Well then," he said, handing us the invoice, "It might as well be invisible mice."
 
 
 
 
And that's it for this week, friends of nature. Cheers!
 
Hank