It came in the middle of a hot rainy afternoon on the outskirts of Louisiana proper. A loud crack-boom with white light surrounded by blazing arrows of wet weather. Mr. Lafayette wouldn't even have given the minor disturbance a second thought, had it not caused him to jolt at his desk and knock a small glass timepiece, dashing it to pieces.
"If god hasn't dammed us all!" Lafayette whispered angrilly through his nose, tapping the stack of tax papers beside him with clenched fist. His slitted eyes gazed out the foggy window at the rain. It came down wet in crepe paper streams and hissed at the pavement, more like fire than water, burning at the paint on Lafayette's mailbox and the supple spring leaves.

Suddenly Lafayette jolted again, this time from sight, not from sound. A medium sized crater imposed itself smugly in the dead center of his crab-grass lawn.