I’d like to say, “Call me Howard Beale!” But since Glenn Beck has co-opted the “Network” character’s “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” mantra, I’ll leave that one aside and just say, … well, what I want to say can’t be printed by The Beachcomber.

Care to guess the nature of my ire? Hint: mailbox bashing season is once again here.

So, here’s the deal. Next time I haplessly answer a cell phone while I’m driving and one of our brave men in Khaki pulls me over to issue a ticket, before I produce my license and registration, I plan to make a speech about law enforcement priorities. It’s going to go something like this:

Dear wonderful officer, since I support your mission, pay your wages and submit willingly to your flashing lights, you owe me at least the courtesy of listening to my frustration. You get to collect big money from me for the great unpardonable sin of my answering a phone while I drive the idyllic byways of our little burg, thereby sustaining the notion that such action protects my fellow drivers from my criminal driving. But I get no similar support from you when it comes to protecting my mail receptacle. You and your agency seem to consider the destruction of federal property (yes, a mailbox is classified as federal property — U.S. Code Title 18, Section 1705) to be something akin to short sheeting beds at summer camp. Those little rascals — look what they’ve gone and done. But since the budget’s tight and we need our sleep, what can the sheriff’s department do? Who has the manpower to watch an entire Island?

Will it come to vigilante justice for the little pranksters? People talk about inviting hunters to thin out the marauding deer on our properties; how long before frustrated, insomniac sharpshooters decide to start picking off little cowards wielding baseball bats from speeding cars? Of course, the morons have one big reason to believe that day will never come: Deer are edible, juvenile delinquents aren’t; that, and the fact that your average Island sportsman isn’t of the same low class ilk as these people. It probably sounds like I’m inciting violation of a few federal laws myself in all this fantasizing, but in the spirit of the joust, I’d like to think at least their fast- spinning tires could be fair game.

And I know — this rant is just the sort of attention they’re looking for. Look, Mike! We got some dame in the paper all frothed up over our handiwork! We’re stars!

I suggested to a group of friends the last time the mailbox bashers hit that we pool a giant reward and flush out the vermin with one of their own rats. Some were afraid it would just encourage them — they’d agree who would be the rat and split the money afterwards. I think that’s a bit far-fetched, although, when you consider the likely average IQ of the gang, maybe not. Hey, Mike, c’mon, you promised you’d give us our $50 once we all got out of juvie all!

Maybe one day when the mailbox of one of our state legislators or one of those brave men in Khaki or someone who has any power on this Island falls prey to the bats, and that person has to go through the monumental hassle — and cost — of replacing the post and the mailbox and picking their undelivered mail up at the post office, or worse just giving up their 2468 Cedar Garden Gate Lane mailing address and getting a post office box because the third round of bashing makes them realize the futility of it all; maybe after they’ve missed important documents from the IRS, which doesn’t allow the post office to forward its mailings or a last note from a dying sister or the Sunday New York Times on their first day off in a month — maybe that day, destruction of federal property will become an offense at least on par with answering a cell phone, and the patrol priorities will come into line with basic common sense.

The punishment for “mailbox baseball,” by the way, is a $250,000 fine and/or up to three years in prison. Just think! A few well-scoped tires and the sharpshooters could finally get some sleep! And maybe some of that booty could help underwrite a few extra deputies for “coward hour patrol.” A girl can dream, can’t she?

— Rebecca Wittman is an Island writer who used to have a mailbox near her home. She now has a post office box.