Goats were said to eat anything at all, probably even zucchini plants, so a nanny goat would be a really great zucchini-to-goat milk converter.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a goat. So, every couple of days I shook my farm stand coffee can for loose change, then left for town (with the tiny squirrels curled up in the pocket of my flannel shirt), picking up bottles along the way to make up the difference between the farm stand's profits and the price of goat milk. Each time, there were fewer and fewer bottles to be found, probably because I'd picked them up a few days before. And since my refrigerator didn't work, I also had to keep going to the filling station for ice. It wasn't easy. But we managed, the little flying squirrels and me. (Granted, I did have to dip into my savings a bit.)

At the library, I found out how to take care of the squirrels, which was good, because everything I knew about flying squirrels, I'd learned from Rocky and Bullwinkle. (Apparently, flying squirrels don't wear goggles or say "Hokey Smokes!" in real life.) As it turned out, I needed a few more supplies than goat milk, like yogurt and vitamins and a flea comb and a feeding syringe and Q-tips. Out of respect for the squirrels' privacy, I won't mention what the Q-tips were used for. Let's just say I was glad when the squirrels were big enough to do their business without prompting.

I fed the squirrels about five times a day, their little bellies going from flat to round with each meal, and they slept curled together like rolled socks in the chest pocket of my shirt. As they got bigger, they liked to climb up my shoulder and scramble up onto my head, where I guess the view was better.

And so there I was at the farm stand late one afternoon, with two flying squirrels atop my head, writing a poem-me, not the squirrels-when a huge black car with dark windows pulled up. The car was as shiny as patent leather. The squirrels and I could see our reflections in it.

A uniformed driver stepped out. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, and he was bald, the kind of bald that comes from a straight razor, not age. He looked like he drank twelve raw eggs for breakfast and never skipped Arm Day. Even his scalp was muscular.

With a gloved hand, the driver opened the rear door. Shoes appeared, as shiny as the car. Their soles touched the ground hesitantly. Then the rest of the man emerged from the car. He wore a suit so black it might have been woven from the fabric of space. You sure didn't see a lot of folks wearing that kind of suit around here, or really any kind of suit. The guy stuck out like a porcupine at a balloon drop.

I didn't realize he was the mogul at first, though I might have guessed. Then again, he didn't recognize me, either. He walked right past me and peered over the edge of the steep, rocky hill to the aluminum roof of my house way down below, then frowned at his very clean shoes and clutched his tie protectively. "You know if the person who lives in that place is home?" he said, not even looking at me.

Neither the squirrels nor the driver answered, so I said, "Yep." (Meaning: yes, I knew.)

Muttering words I thought the squirrels were too young to hear, the man turned sideways and gingerly descended the hill like a mountain goat.

Meanwhile the driver stood beside the car, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, gloved hand holding gloved wrist, almost but not quite motionless. I smiled at the driver, and got a slight face twitch in response. I thought: I have met the Living Statue, was friends with the Living Statue, and you, sir, are no Living Statue.

I went back to work on my poem. Soon, I heard the dark-suited guy knocking at my front door. Knock-knock-knock. Pause. Then: "Hello?" Pause. Knock-knock-knock. Then: "Helloooo?" Then the sound of knocking on window glass. Rap-rap-rap. And so forth. A few minutes later, he mountain-goated his way back up the hill, panting and annoyed.

"No one's there," he said accusingly, this time looking my way. He had a pouty sort of face that brought to mind paintings of Roman emperors. His gaze came to rest on the squirrels, who were doing their best impression of a toupee.

I told him of course I wasn't there; I couldn't be two places at once, after all. (I was pretty law-abiding when it came to the laws of physics.)

"Wait . . . that was your home?" he said, pulling his eyes away from the squirrels.

"Yep," I said.

He put his hands over his eyes, blew out air, and rubbed his face for a while. Finally, he smiled and shook his head. "Well, goddamn! You've got a hell of a poker face," he said. "You really had me going."

Going where? I wondered.

He said, "You'd think you were sitting on some kind of goddamn goldmine to hold out the way you did."

I told him that as far as I knew, there was no kind of goldmine trapped beneath my home; granted, I couldn't say for sure, but it seemed like the sort of thing poor luckless Ed would have disclosed.

"And it's not like this-this 'house' of yours-it's not like it's some 'sentimental' thing, been in the family for centuries, great-grand-whoever built the house with his 'bare hands,' and blah blah blah." The poor guy was going to get a finger cramp making all those air quotes.

I told him I didn't think you could build an aluminum single-wide rhombus with your bare hands, and as far as I knew, my great-grand-whoevers came from Kentucky and Tennessee.

"Look, can I be frank, here?" the mogul said.

I told him he could be anyone he wanted to be, or so Mr. Rogers used to say.

"Between you and me, you were damn lucky to get an offer as generous as mine. We're talking about a basically worthless piece of land here. And it's got this piece-of-junk eyesore of a tin shack on it, no offense, that a bunch of rats wouldn't live in-"

I gently interrupted and told him that a community of rats is called a "mischief." Though in some circles, I thought "pack" was also acceptable, if less proper. And I for one believed in calling every group by its preferred term, even if people like him might dismiss this policy as silly political correctness.

The mogul paused and blinked slowly, perhaps dazed by this influx of new knowledge, and then continued, "-a piece-of-junk eyesore of a tin shack that'll cost more to bulldoze than it's worth." And on he went about the price used aluminum was fetching these days, and something about land values and re-zoning and tax lien auctions and eminent domain, in all sorts of Pythagorean sentences that might have been intelligible to the poetry-challenged tax folks, but which sounded to me like a mischief of math had made a nest of words.

I realized that, strange as it might seem, to those of a certain frame of mind, my house might not appear very impressive. No, really. I suppose it's all in your point of view. I mean, a paper wasp's nest is a marvel of construction, but it probably wouldn't look very homey to the swallow, who prefers her home to be woven of grass and fluff. And I'm sure the possum's den is comfy with its packed-mud walls and bed of dried leaves . . . but a bee would grumble about the lack of hexagons in the décor. By the same logic, moguls just might not appreciate modestly-sized green aluminum rhombuses. And to people of his mindset, this land probably wasn't very appealing either. It was too muddy in the winter and too dry in the summer, uneven and plagued with rocks and weeds. "Poor," some would call it. "Useless. Good for nothing."

But hardscrabble soil is very good for something. Any gardener could tell you that the poorest soil yields the richest herbs. Difficulty is the spice of . . . well, spice. Though I wouldn't expect the mogul to understand that, given that he's not exactly the self-made sort; his father was a mogul and his grandfather was a mogul and his great-grandfather before him.

(Me, I liked herbs. Herbs were the poets of the plant world. Maybe they weren't practical when compared to, say, vegetables, and a little of them went a long way, but without them life could be awfully bland.)

Anyway . . . I saw the mogul's mistake. It was an easy error to make. It was a problem of math, really. The problem being, that he was using math at all. He looked here and there and added this to that and came out with numbers. He'd gotten cost and worth all mixed up. And he'd left a lot of factors out of the equation.

For instance, take my favorite apple tree. That tree could've been a hundred years old, easy. For who knows how many years it had been mining water from twenty or thirty feet underground, siphoning it with its zillion tiny living straws. Not mining for big veins of water, mind you, but for every teeny tiny droplet it could squeeze out of the dirt. Every day for decades it had sucked a ton of water up out of the ground, dragged it cell by cell like a miniature bucket brigade up through its miles of branches and twigs and leaves, and somehow upcycled the droplets into fragrant flowers and crisp tangy fruits and clean water vapor and fresh air. People during the Great Depression might well have stumbled upon that very tree when they were half-dead from starving, and feasted on its fruits, and couldn't believe their luck. Or maybe they feasted on the other creatures that feasted on the fruits. Who knew how many billions of living things, tiny and not so tiny, this tree had served while it had stood there for a century, seemingly idle and jobless? Who knew how many millions of tons of water and air it had filtered over the years, without anyone offering it a simple thanks for work well done?

The mogul was waving a hand in front of my face. "Did you hear me?" he said. "Goddamn, what a poker face! I mean, whoo-ee. You're killing me here. Killing me. All right, fine. I'll double that last offer. You hear me? Double. I must be crazy." He appealed to his driver. "Am I crazy, Anton?"

"Certifiable, boss," the driver said.

"Thank you, Anton." The mogul turned back to me. "Did you get that? Double! But that's final, and I mean final. And you have to take it right now. Today. Capisce? Tomorrow, the day after, I might come to my senses and not be feeling so generous. So what do you say? Do we have a deal or do we have a deal?"