Things were going pretty well on Monday 5 th June, 2006. Apart from accidentally swallowing my mouthwash after brushing my teeth, it started out looking like it would be a good day. Then I read an article in the Rocky Mountain News, by Jay Dedrick, titled "Day of Reckoning - what 06/06/06 adds up to." The New Bible Testament's Revelations 13:18, he wrote, tells us that the number 666 is pretty bad: "positively demonic," he suggests. (Rev. 13:18 Here is wisdom. He who has understanding, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is six hundred threescore and six.) Well, like 100 million others I have read the Da Vinci Code and I know therefore that the glass pyramid at the Louvre was built with 666 panes of glass. This seemingly minor coincidence planted a little kernel of concern in my mind.

I happened to be at a meeting later on Monday evening. A lady who works in the medical field told several of us that she was aware that a lot of expectant mothers whose due dates were June 6 th were trying to be induced a day early or delay their baby's arrival for at least another day to avoid the stigma of a 06/06/06 birth date. This was becoming a little suspicious. I remember all too well the 100s of thousands of superstitious Americans who stocked their basements and tornado shelters with canned food, bottled water and spare generators, for the new millennium transition on December 31 st, 2000 (Y2K), even though the real start of the so-called new millennium was January 1 st, 2001. But what's a slight 365 day miscalculation when you're really into the doomsday and satanic stuff?

Back to the present day. I put this demon and satan nonsenseout of my mind and went to bed. On the morning of Tuesday 6 th June, 2006 I woke up and the bedside clock showed the time was 7:06 a.m. The perceptive reader will immediately realize that 7:06 is actually 66 minutes past 6 o'clock. I was literally stunned.

I went out to pick up the newspaper. A rabbit (Desert Cottontail to be specific) was sitting in the bushes near our front door, eating our flowering quince. The number 6 was clearly visible in its fur. (See photograph) It's hard to believe this, but it is true.

I drove to the gym to get some exercise, hoping to calm my rising fears with a good workout. It seemed to help, until I glanced at the speedometer when I got home and it read - you guessed it - 66,666 miles. Outwardly I was calm, but inside I was a coiled spring of anxiety. 66,666 Is a huge beast number.

My color printer cartridge was almost empty, so I went to the office supply store. My purchases came to $61.55. With tax, the receipt total was $66.66. Returning home, I was determined to get to the bottom of these numbers. Were they some kind of prophecy, a message, a warning, or were these recurring 6's just a random, yet unsettling, series of coincidences? Was I being punished for reading the Da Vinci Code? There had to be a logical explanation. I buried myself in texts of numerology, astrology, Satanism and the occult for the rest of the day.

After hours of research I discovered the following remarkable fact. If the letter A is defined to be equal to 36 (= 6 x 6), B = 37, C = 38, and so on, then: The sum of the letters in the word SUPERSTITIOUS is 666.

I also realized that YourHub.com has 10 letters, which has nothing to do with the number 6. So my story had a happy ending. Life returned to normal on June 7 th.