mick wrote on 11/24/10 at 22:59:46:


To the best of my understanding the dead mouse IS a gift, it's actually the "training tool" to get the kittens playing with their food... if you know what I mean...

A horse's head is a death warning in the old days (I mean, really old days) of the Sicilian Mafia, when gentlemen rode horses, sharecroppers rode donkeys and the poor folk simply walked.
The severed head of  your own horse in your bed meant "we got your horse, you're next".

In those days, it was by knife or shotgun.

I'm talking about the times up to the 1950's, when Bosses were gentlemen with whom you could share pleasant conversation over mid-morning Sunday coffee without ever realizing whom you were talking to, when the Mafia dealt with real estate, not prostitution or drugs. Things have spoiled since then, namely too much technology and the grandchildren coming on holiday from NYC and Chicago.

Really, just read selected chapters from Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

Incidentally, believe it or not, the Mafia (originally with two "Fs", Maffia) did not start out as organized crime but as an underground movement of gentlemen to rally against Arabic occupation in the 10th Century.

To support this fact, teh words ياص (mahyas) = bully ; and مرفوض (marfud) = reject or outcast.  

In other words, people who led a "daytime social life" and a "nightime life as outlaw".
Over the centuries the phenomenon evolved, to the point the French occupants in the 13th Century (Easter Monday, 1282) in an uprising known as the "Sicilian Vespers".

'nuff... else you'll think I'm a know-it-all...