My indifference to Jimmy cracking corn.

The Battle of New Orleans?

(My childhood imagination was astonished by the idea of "squirrel guns.")

Wow. That was fast. Scraps nails it. They ran throught the bushes, and they ran through the brambles, they ran through the places where the rabbits couldn't go.

Johnny Horton had the hit, of course. And, for those of you who slept through seventh-grade history, it's a battle that was most notable for the fact that it happened a couple of weeks after a peace treaty to end the war had been signed in Belgium.

OK, Scraps, it's on you to entertain us for the rest of the day.

Not till I see the whites of all your goddamned eyes.

Hang on, I'll come up with something here, if you want. I'm between manuscripts anyway.

Unitl Scraps finds his sheet music and trusty fiddle, this might be a good time for me to recount a tale of horror from the annals of domestic wildlife control.

Last night around midnight, the house was quiet. Everyone else had just gone to sleep, and I was at the sink, trying to brush my teeth as silently as possible, as lately the baby has been easily awakened and she sleeps just across the hall. As I finished, I heard a scratching, scrabbling coming from somewhere -- perhaps from the window -- but I wasn't sure from where, as bathroom sounds tend to echo off the tile. I thought perhaps the cat was agitating to come in, as she sometimes does, with a naughty paw under the door. I looked outside -- no kitty.

Just then the sounds returned. Branches blowing against the frosted-glass window? That seemed more likely, as the sound was, I could now tell, definitely coming from there. But the tree outside was not all that close and had never blown up against the windowpane before? I looked more closely across the tub toward the window -- which has a rather nice, deep ledge, tiled and convenient as the repository for shampoo bottles and suchlike.

Then I saw them. An extra-large bottle of shampoo stood at one corner of this shelf, pushed almost flush with the vertical edge of the casing. And from within the space between bottle and casing, two long and dextrous feelers waggled themselves malevolently. In the shadowed space behind the bottle, I could just make out the looming bulk of an enormous Periplaneta fuliginosa, bent on some hideous, desperate plan.

Friends, I won't lie to you. I jumped back a few inches -- in surprise, in loathing, and, yes, in fear. But before the beast could make its move, I remembered the contents of the not-yet-child-safe cabinet underneath the sink. A moment later, a weapon was in hand before which my six-legged foe stood little chance. Yes, the good people at Johnson Wax make a little product called Fantastik with Bleach, and it is the aid and comfort of all who contfront such insectoid terrors.

The destruction of the enemy was the work of a moment. From the first spritz, it realized its peril, and attempted an escape. But modern pump-action technology proved superior to the vaunted armature of even this creature so finely adapted for survival. A brief struggle, the application of a large handful of toilet paper -- the rest was silence.

I slept the good sleep of the victor, but my dreams were troubled. For I know, in my heart, that this monster was not alone.

Eep.

A supplemental quiz from the Wombat's sidekick, the Leering Drunken Stoat:

Matilda Joslyn Gage, nineteenth-century suffragist leader, has been neglected by modren history. In her time she was famous -- notorious -- and was one of the triumvirate leadership of the National Woman Suffrage Association, with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was an abolitionist, and her home was a station on the Underground Railroad; she was an advocate of the rights of American Indians, and was adopted into the Mohawk Nation and given the name Sky Carrier. She was the first legal test case in New York for women's right to vote (she lost), and originated the strategy of petitioning Congress, as convicted felons were allowed to do, for "relief from political liabilities." She drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Women with Stanton, and presented it with Anthony. She was a tireless researcher, and genuinely radical; she published evidence that the cotton gin was invented by a woman, and that the 1862 Tennessee Campaign of General Grant was planned by a woman. She didn't believe in gradualism in women's history, but rather in the past existence of matriarchies which were overthrown by Christianity. Her enmity with organized religion, which intensified as conservative Christianity gained national power in the late nineteenth century, would eventually lead to her split with Stanton and Anthony, as Gage pursued uncompromising policies to the end of her life.

This question, alas, will do little to redress the injustice of her historical neglect (apart from the summary above), because it isn't about her, and not even about a woman. Her daughter would marry a man who would become quite famous; in fact, one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century, a man whose writing is marked by attitudes toward women and the relationship of the sexes that are often startlingly progressive and even revolutionary, yet which went largely unremarked in his time. Who is he?

Whoops, sorry about the unclosed tag.

January 8th? The King? The birth of Elvis?

Damn. I'm late on that.

In answer to Scraps: John Dos Passos?

The Camera Eye: a stoat typing "not Dos Passos."

Should I give hints? I'm not sure whether anyone's here.

Our mysterious figure created a female character whose name is probably better known than his is.

Russell Myers, creator of "Broom Hilda."

Neither him nor the creator of the Ultravixens.

The name of another of Mr. X's female creations has been mentioned in the Wombat quiz on several occasions.

Scrapple?

Mr. X is not a Pennsylvania German.

John Steinbeck?

Scratch that last...shouldn't have hit post. Clearly more famous than any of his female characters.

Mr. X's most famous character said at least one line that remains in popular currency today.

you're killing me...is there no one to come and help out?

Gavin probably knows this one, if he checks in....

The famous line was not written by Mr. X, but was uttered by his famous character in a movie long after his death.

The famous line -- there are others, but this particular famous line -- includes two proper nouns that would later be the names of 1970s hit rock bands (not that there's necessarily any connection, although in one case it seems extremely likely).

Checking in late, and offering Chicago and Boston as possible answers to the hint, without having any other clue what the answer might be.

Impatient and clue-free, I did the google thing, and enjoy the question and clues in retrospect. It's too bad that more people aren't paying attention. Or maybe they just don't have the brains . . .

I wasn't sure this one could even be tracked down through Google; I didn't know the relationship until I read a biography of Mr. X. All hail Google.

All right...give me one more clue, or I'm going to Google myself and put my curiosity out of its misery.

Several movies were made of Mr. X's work. (He made some himself, in fact.) Few of the movies survive. But one of them, made long after his death, is one of the most famous movies ever, with a cast of characters and lines and songs that are familiar to everyone today. Even among the few Americans who have never seen it, no one can be unaware of everything about it.

Thornton Wilder! I was at first thinking of him in connection with Our Town, and dismissed it because of your clue about the female character. But Hello Dolly is based on The Matchmaker.

Am I right?

I wish you were!

Scott's last post contains a loud clue.

OK. I was going to guess L. Frank Baum before (especially as people ascribe all sorts of political stuff to the Oz books), but something in your earlier clues suggested that his name wasn't well known. I see now that was a misinterpretation. Should have followed my instinct.

And why I left Toto off of my mental inventory of 70s bands, the god of trivia only knows.

Yay! Whoop whoop whoop!

And here I was worried that I had implied Baum was more famous than he is.

It's funny: for all the implications of feminism and communism and anti-imperialism etc in the Oz books, no one considered them subversive when they were coming out. And when they started getting banned in the middle of the century, it was only because they were fantasies.

Was it L. Frank Baum? I can't think of the 70s rock bands tho... Wizard? Oh! Kansas! and of course, there's Elton's song, but is Oz a band name? Glenda?

Oh, and the female character whose name has been mentioned many times in the Wombat quiz? The Patchwork Girl: Scraps.

What the hell just happened there? Oh! TOTO!!! Of course.

That was excellent. Thanks, Patchwork Girl!