I live in a community full of pranksters and practical jokers. It can lead to a lot of hilarious moments, but it can also, as often as not, bring about confusion and turmoil.

On one occasion of my 27 years of living at this address, I opened my mailbox to discover one-half of a polka-dot bikini. It did not belong to my wife, but it did cause her to have a number of questions for me. In another instance of mailbox trickery, my wife retrieved the mail only to find a long, slender, baked sweet potato that was wrapped in clear cellophane. Do you know what a baked sweet potato resembles? She wouldn’t touch it.

Neither I, nor any of my neighbors, ever truly know how much rain we’ve gotten, because everyone knows where everyone else’s rain gauge is located, and water is usually added or poured out by the time the owner gets a chance to look.

Whenever anyone gets a new vehicle, someone is likely to add fuel to the tank for a few weeks until the new owner starts bragging about the great mileage he's getting, only to have the same person siphon out gas for the next few weeks, causing great consternation — and maybe even a trip back to the dealership to have the engine checked out.

Of course, there are always the Father’s Day cards (with no return address but locally postmarked) saying, “Hi, Dad. Sure would like to have been part of your life.” Or a nice, official-looking, computer-generated envelope that certainly looks like it is from the county department of health, except that it is stamped with “STD test results” in big red letters across the front. Now I know why the mail delivery lady looks at me a little strangely.

All of the aforementioned stories are presented so you can understand my confusion last week when I entered my bull pasture to deliver a fresh, new round bale of alfalfa hay. As I neared the feeder to dump the bale from the front-end loader of my tractor — there was no feeder there! I was in a bit of a dither as I started looking around for the missing bale ring. It was there yesterday, so where could it be?

The field is only a few acres in size, is entirely open and is right next to a county road. After driving the tractor around the field's perimeter, I finally discovered the bale ring at the bottom of the hill, sitting perfectly in the dry bed of a small creek that runs through the edge of the pasture. It was underneath an overhanging tree, completely intact and unbent.

A normal, logical person could only assume the bulls had become bored and started butting and playing with the bale ring until they had it up on its side, and then nudged it down the hill, until it landed at the bottom of the slope, in the center of the dry creek bed, underneath the old tree. But a normal person doesn’t live in this community, surrounded by these neighbors.

Crownover writes from Missouri.