Soon after Rune had built his “pool,” a rat ran across Ove’s newly mown lawn and into the trees on the other side. Ove immediately called a “crisis meeting” of the association and demanded that all local residents put out rat poison around their houses. The neighbors protested, of course, because they had seen hedgehogs by the edge of the woods and were concerned that they might eat the poison. Rune also protested, because he was afraid that some of it would end up in his pool. Ove suggested to Rune that he button up his shirt and go see a psychologist about his delusions of living on the French Riviera. Rune made a malicious joke at Ove’s expense, to the effect that Ove had probably only imagined seeing that rat. All the others laughed. Ove never forgave Rune for that. The next morning someone had thrown birdseed all over Rune’s outside space, and Rune had to use a spade to chase away a dozen rats as big as vacuum cleaners in the next few weeks. After that Ove got permission to put out poison, even though Rune mumbled that he’d pay him back for this.

Two years later Rune won the Great Tree Conflict, when he gained permission at the annual meeting to saw down a tree blocking his and Anita’s evening sun on one side. The same tree on the other side screened off Ove and Sonja’s bedroom from blinding morning sunlight. Further, he managed to block Ove’s furious motion that the association would then have to pay for Ove’s new awning.

However, Ove got his revenge during the Snow Clearance Skirmish of the following winter, in which Rune wanted to anoint himself “Chief of Snow Shoveling” and at the same time lumber the Residents’ Association with the purchase of a gigantic snowblower. Ove had no intention of letting Rune walk around with some bloody contraption at the expense of the association and spray snow over Ove’s windows, which he made crystal clear at the steering group meeting.

Rune was still chosen to be responsible for snow clearance, but to his great annoyance he had to spend all winter shoveling the snow by hand between the houses. The outcome of this, of course, was that he consistently shoveled outside all the houses in their row except Ove and Sonja’s. Just to annoy Rune, in mid-January Ove hired a gigantic snowblower to clear the ten square yards outside his door. Rune was incandescent about it, Ove remembers with delight to this day.

Of course, Rune found a way of paying him back the following summer, by buying one of those monstrous lawn tractors. Then, by a combination of treachery, lies, and conspiracies, he managed to get approval at the annual meeting to take over Ove’s lawn-mowing responsibilities on the grounds that he had “slightly more adequate equipment than the one who was in charge of it before.”