The phone rang a few minutes before eight, as I was hauling the last load of gear out to the truck.

Gotta be a game warden, I figured, wondering why I'm not already on check station.

Or else a hunter with an urgent question. Perhaps regarding the "No Trespassing" signs that have shown up this year on a popular hunting trail south of town?

It wasn't.

It was a gal from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

I snickered aloud as she told me her name, and agency.

"Is that funny?" she asked, in a near-Southern drawl that suggested she did not find it funny at all.

Well, I answered, it's the opening day of deer season. I shouldn't even be home right now. Are you mental?

Guess not. Nor was she amused, as she continued to the point of her conversation as if the first of October was just another day.

But in the next room I could hear the wife, also hustling off to work, snicker.

"Are you mental?"

Apparently they have no sense of humor at the NRC.

And apparently the wife would occasionally like to answer her office phone with that question.