Freaky ass mystery about butts

Cigarette butts to be precise. I go out into my tiny back yard and have a cigarette. It's a nice little relaxing thing. I have a little saucer that I keep the butts in, because I'm too lazy to get a real ashtray.

And, let's face it, I'm a little lazy about emptying the thing. So it's pretty much overflowing. With the recent rains (California has so far experienced its wettest year in over a century), the butts have formed a little solid mass of expended nicotine, filters and burnt cloves.

OK, so I have part of a cigarette, stick it in the pile, go inside, watch "Las Vegas", take a crap. It's an exciting life I lead. In the meantime, the wind is kicking up something pretty fierce. In fact, while I'm on the john, it almost sounds like maybe there's someone in the backyard.

Then I go for my 10:15 smoke before watching my tivo'd "24". And, what the hell is this? Where's my solid mass of butts? All that's left in the saucer are a few butts cemented around the edges and a mass of ash in the center. So, frankly, this kinda concerns me.

I mean, there's basically three theories. The first is that the big winds carried it off in one huge clump, leaving nearly no evidence behind. Or a bird came along and grabbed the whole mass (and if she's lining her nest for her newborns with it, I'm gonna feel real guilty). Or my landlord, seeing the massively overflowing pile, did a little emptying.

Pretty much all three theories sound like bullshit to me. The first sounds unlikely because I looked all over my backyard, and there really was no evidence of that. The second is even more ridiculous. There's no way any animal could have taken it without leaving a little trail of stubs behind, and I think it would pretty much break apart pretty quickly. And the third, which is scary for being the most plausible, requires my landlord to go into my backyard in the middle of a big wind, and then do a half-ass job of emptying the saucer. I don't see any of these things happening, but the landlord thing seems most likely. And I can only think he'd be thinking "what an irresponsible slob".

I hate the thought of pissing him off because he's very forgiving about not being totally on time with the rent, generally isn't nosy and is a pretty nice guy.

So I keep looking for plausible theory number four, because though all the evidence points to it, this last theory really isn't much better than the other ones. So far I've come up with hallucination, something involving the neighbor's cat or the hand of God.

Whatever, enough of the paranoia. I've got the Jack Bauer Power Hour to get to.