People like contests. At least, they like contests where the lifting is easy and the prizes are sweet.

So I guess I should not have been surprised last week when our initial “find the baseballs” contest in the New Hampshire Sunday News got an immediate and sizeable response.

By the Wednesday afternoon deadline, we had received more than 500 entries. From all the correct ones, and there were many, (I said it was easy) two winners were picked at random. So Susanne Raymond of Manchester and Luanne Lemay of Nashua will be getting six tickets each to upcoming Fisher Cats games at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium.

The park is beautiful, the seats are behind home plate, and the Double A baseball they play there is often just one stop short of the major league for many of these players.

The contest continues each week this summer. I hope you get a chance to play. Details are in the Sunday News and also online at UnionLeader.com/baseballcontest.

Union Leader employees, agents, and their families are ineligible for such contests and it's a good thing. If we ever have a tall tales contest, oldest grandson Ike would be a contender for sure.

His tales are already very tall.

The other night, out of nowhere, he asked me if I know about “those takeover plants.”

I was impressed that he knew the term, but his grandmother gardens so I figured he had heard her on the subject of pesky plants that take over and choke out others.

“What about them?” I asked Ike.

“They are trying to take my daddy's truck,” he said, his eyes growing wide and his tone serious.

“A vine came out and wrapped around the antenna and is trying to pull the truck into the weeds!”

I can only imagine what this kid will do with the story of the squirrel that got into his house this summer and scared the daylights out of his parents.

Indeed, Ike's mom was so startled by her encounter that she ran out of the room with baby Spike before realizing she had left middle son Mike at the mercy of the rat with the bushy tail.

Brave pioneer mom that she is, did she reenter to save Mike? Not exactly. But she did call these helpful instructions from the doorway, “Run, Mike, run!”

Yep, Ike is going to have some tall tales to tell.

Write to Joe McQuaid at publisher@unionleader.com.