I confess, I would make a terrible criminal. See that? I already confessed, and I hadn’t even done anything underhanded yet. My mother is the one we kids always said would be the ideal wicked-mastermind, because she’s so incredibly good and kind and nice, nobody would ever suspect her. Of course, there’s the problem of getting anyone so genuinely nice and kind and good to actually Do Bad Deeds, so you can see that in practical terms our family is just not cut out for skillful bad-deed-doing.

So it’s conceivably a somewhat sympathetic chord being struck that makes me kind of like tales of really inept criminality. Yes, it’s also that the stories all end with comeuppance for miscreants, because if you’re really a clod among crooks, you will get caught, and I am after all a great goody two-shoes at heart. But maybe one with a hint of a mean streak, because it’s probably pure Schadenfreude that makes me truly enjoy tales of ineptitude among the nefarious.

Hey, Who’s the Real Bad Guy Here?

One day I was evading the police pursuing me,

And by a mere coincidence, I bumped into a tree

That happened, oddly, by surprise, to tip onto a house

And through its roof, which crumpled down, startling a rabid mouse

That shot across the neighbors’ lawn and bit their Shih Tzu dog,

Upon which, he upended, deathlike, in aphasic fog;

The neighbor lady found him lying stiff-legged on the lawn

And started in with CPR* to save him, thereupon

Shocking the Shih Tzu back to action, sending him a-pounce,

As though he squirted from her arms, to give the mouse a trounce

That sent the rodent racing back to its familiar haunts,

And by the tree, it spotted me, quite startled for the nonce—

The both of us, indeed, taken aback for just that blink,

Until a second later it occurred to me to think

There were some coppers on my tail, and if I didn’t scram

They’d find me gaping at a mouse, and clever as I am,

I reached instead and grabbed the little critter by the tail

And strapped him in my seatbelt, so if any went to jail

It would be one that, anyhow, had terrorized a pet,

Whereas I’m just a burglar, and I ain’t bit no one yet.

[Note for my Canadian friends: not referencing the Canadian Pacific Railway here, although I suppose one could make the argument that running a train over an unconscious being might forcibly restart his heart with a powerful squashing, if it didn’t kill him outright]

Rumors

Mellie’s tidy garden

Upon the gatehouse roof

Is rumored to conceal some things

Of which we have no proof.

It’s pretty for its own sake, yes,

With dainty flowering plants

But the idea it’s secretive

Is really what enchants

Roof gardens are quite magical

All of their own accord,

But we like thinking Mellie’s

Best, for hiding untoward,

Suspicious things not seen at first,

Perceived among the flowers,

But only yet imagine

In our impish idle hours.