Stupid teenagers.

In Germany, setting off fireworks at the turn of the new year is not just tradition but a requirement. It's a lot of fun and CPT Dick and I had commented that we were sorry that we missed it this year.

What we didn't know is that some of the village teenagers took advantage of our absence to do their own combustible merrymaking in our backyard. Which, you know, would be all well and good. Teenagers will be teenagers and all that. I'm sure we expected to find the odd spent rocket and empty bottle of Jager somewhere on the premises. Hell, had we been here, they would have been ours.

But we didn't expect that the idiots would have thrown cherry bombs into our goldfish pond. Yeah, yeah, I know if the guys on "Jackass" do it, the masses are sure to follow. And when you equate for location, that means that the German kids will be doing it two to three years after that.

Their actions had the desired effect. There are now 30 odd dead fish floating under the ice in the pond.

It just infuriates me. I mean, I'd expect that kind of shit in the states. But for some reason, living in this small town where I can leave my wallet in the driveway over the weekend by accident and find it again untouched on Monday made me feel safe from that kind of thoughtless teenage bullshit.

So guess what I'll be doing tomorrow now that the rains have started melting the ice cover? You guessed it -- fishing out dead goldfish.

I'm seriously thinking about keeping them in a bucket by the front door to randomly lob at the teenagers when they are using my driveway to practice their BMX tricks.