How the Wise Turkey came to know how patient Opossums are
One evening, in late fall, the Wise Turkey was alone in the house that he shared with two Men. Night was coming, and chilly fog settled in from the ocean. Just as he had built a fire in the fireplace and was settling down to read, he heard a noise that he found unusual.

Tap clunk, tap clunk, it went. It was coming from the woodshop.

This is strange, the turkey muttered to himself. The guys went away to find new wood to bring back down the mountain, to work in their shop. There should not be anyone in the shop now.

Might it be a burglar? Well, they aren't unheard-of in these parts. But a burglar would have to be very clumsy to make the same noise, over and over.

Turkeys are not easily frightened, except by hungry foxes. But turkeys are very careful creatures. Maybe a badger or a dog had stumbled into the woodshop and couldn't find its way out. A turkey opening the door would probably surprise such a creature and the results would be unpleasant.

The Wise Turkey took his lantern, and closed the shutter on it so only a narrow slice of light could escape from it, then he went out through the back door from the kitchen. He crossed the patio, then the garden, went behind the wagon shed, and over to the woodshop. He stepped quietly, without creeping, approaching the door.

Tap clunk, tap clunk, it continued. The windowless door was latched. No glow of lanterns from within lit the edges of the door. He heard no snuffling or snorting of some animal trapped inside.

So he quietly slipped the latch upward and opened the door a crack. It was utterly dark within, but the tap clunk was louder.

He raised the lantern and aimed the narrow slit of light inside. His eyes grew wide with wonder.

A huge machine stood in the middle of the shop, with tools and wood shavings laid about it on tables and sawhorses. It was almost to the ceiling of the high shed of the shop, and as big around as his Grandmother's dining room table. Wheels and cogs meshed with each other, like children's fingers clasped in prayer, within the wooden frame, all carefully hewn from wood of various colors and grains. The spokes and teeth of the gears all bore oil or grease that sometimes dripped down to other moving parts, or down to the floor.

And with each tap clunk, some gears moved just one tooth at a time. As he entered the shop and stepped near the machine, he aimed the beam of light up to see how high it really stood. There, coiled in a spiral at the very top, was a long band of shiny metal, as wide as his favorite scarf and long enough to wrap around the shed at least twice. It was bent smoothly into the spiral as if it were a spring, storing energy. At each tap clunk, the spiraled band of metal quivered, ever so slightly.

He then stepped around to one side of the machine, facing the rear wall of the shop. There a long beam, at least as tall as a man, hung from the top of the machine's heavy frame. It swung from side to side. At the top end, two smaller levers reached upward to a gear, so that every time the beam swung to the left, it would let the gear move a little, but then the other lever would reach up and stop the gear before it moved too far. Then the beam would stop and begin swinging back to the right, and the other lever let it go again, and the first lever would catch it.

At the end of the beam, there was attached a basket. Though the beam swung quickly, he could peek into the basket and almost see what was inside. But what drew his interest was a little folding shelf on one of the workbenches. As the pendulum swung toward it, it lifted the shelf, then as it swung away, the shelf fell again. Tap, clunk.

The Wise Turkey carefully stepped to the shelf, caught it before the next clunk, and lifted it and latched it shut. It no longer fell into the path of the pendulum to be lifted and dropped.

Just then a small but confident voice piped up. "Hey, dere's someboddy here!" The voice seemed to approach, then recede. "Can you help me? I'm-a caught in dis!"

The Wise Turkey turned his lamp again to the pendulum's basket. Two bright eyes peered out, blinking because the back-and-forth motion was making their owner dizzy.

"I have no idea how to stop this machine and let out. Who are you?"

"I'm-a da Opossum Cicero. I was-a dropping da pebbles into da basket, to make-a da pendulo swing slower."

"You didn't drop enough pebbles in, then, did you?"

"Dat's enough-a da funny joking dere. Da pendulo is-a too heavy for you to stop. But if-a you trow more pebbles in, it-a slow down some more. I get out."

"What pebbles?"

"Dere's a bag of dem inside-a dat shelf you just closed."

And there were. The Turkey had to watch the pendulum swing, and time the drop of the pebble so it fell to the basket at the same time that the basket was in the way. Only about one pebble in three made it into the basket.

The Turkey then moved himself so he was dropping the pebbles from the center of the pendulum's swing. Timing was easier, and soon every pebble fell into the basket. Once in a while, the opossum said "ouch!" because the pebble hit him as it fell in.

After many pebbles, the pendulum seemed to slow down, and the Opossum was able to climb atop the basket and fall out. He thudded to the floor, very tired and dizzy. The Turkey helped him to his clawed paws.

"Tanks. I t'ought I was in dere for good."

"Why were you here?"

"The wood workers offer me the crayfish if I add pebbles until the swing is just the right length."

"That was how long ago?"

"Oh my. Must have been fifteen-a songs."

"Songs?"

"I know the pendulo swing right if it swing-a thirty times in my family's song. Dis is what I do. Sing the song same way every time."

"How many days might that be? The men have been gone for a week."

The opossum tried to get up on its hind legs but couldn't from dizziness, and went back to all fours. "Sounds about-a right."

After an awkward pause, which Turkeys normally don't find all that awkward, the Turkey offered: "The pendulum is faster now with your weight gone."

The opossum drew a deep breath and sighed. "Yeah, dis gonna take some time to fix." He hummed to himself, while his eyes followed the swinging basket, then shook his head sadly. "All-a wrong."

And this is how the Wise Turkey came to know how patient Opossums are.

Still a live blog
Working on two more entries, one about Roman soldiers guarding Jesus's tomb and another about a dispirited grandfather in Pakistan.

Plus recapturing several more Wise Turkey stories.

The Wise Turkey encounters a Mysterious Squeaking
It was on a night just like last Wednesday, early spring, a very chilly and wet night just after a few warm ones. The Wise Turkey was preparing himself for bed, having rinsed mud from his muddy gardening boots and hung them on a peg in the pantry, then taking a small dinner of seeds and bread, brushing his feathers carefully to clean out the mud and pollen, and climbing the stairs of the house to his room.

He had sipped some water and sat down on the edge of the bed. Listening to the creak of the springs in the old bed, he noted they somehow sounded different. He paused, motionless, and the creaking and scratching continued briefly, then stopped. He thought for a moment---Wise Turkeys are pensive like that, always conjecturing an explanation for anything out of the ordinary---bed springs don't do things like that, at least these springs never did before.

After a moment, and a heavy eyelid or two, he thought better of it and swung one skinny, clawed leg up on the bed. The creaking and scratching resumed. He paused, motionless again, straining his hearing. Yes, he was not mistaken.

He bounced, lightly, once on the bed. The unusual sound was not coming from his bed. It was coming from the wall. He cranked his eyelids as wide open as he could. Silently, he lowered his leg to the floor and stood, then crept to the window. He reached to the sill of the window and brushed it with his wing, softly at first then harder, until it made a gentle squeak.

Another squeak came in reply, outside the window.

He slid the window open slowly, and carefully stuck his head out to look.

There in the gloom, above and toward the south-eastern corner of the house, three dark forms hung under the eave of the roof. One large, two smaller on either side of it, like three black leathery bells hanging there in the dark.

The Wise Turkey brushed his wing against the sill once more, and he heard the strange sound once again, though it was barely a sound, it was more like a click that happened so fast he could barely hear it. Ben and Doug, the old men who lived with him in the house, would never have heard it because they were humans, and they were old. Old humans don't hear high-pitched sounds as well as young ones, you see, and there are sounds even young ones can't hear.

Then he saw two tiny points of light open at the bottom of the large thing in the middle. They blinked. They were eyes, and the eyes were looking directly at him.

You probably know what those dark hanging forms are by now.

The large middle one stretched wide with leathery wings taut between fine bones like the fingers of a hand. The two smaller ones slid closer to the large one and climbed from the eave to its side. Then they squeaked again, in tiny, weak voices.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see that they were nuzzling their tiny noses into the fur of their mother's belly. Moments later, they squeaked again and shivered. Wise turkeys, as I already told you, tend to figure things out if they are disturbed or if they think any kind of suffering is going on. And these bats were clearly suffering.

The warmth of spring had called these bats out from their winter sleep, and had offered many flies and moths for them to eat. But the cold snap of this night had cut short the bats' anxious feeding too soon after coming out of hibernation.

Soon, the Wise Turkey knew what he would do.

There had been peaches for sale at the market several days ago, brought over the mountains by his friend the Elk, from a land where the seasons are ahead of ours here and peaches have already ripened and the trees are preparing themselves for winter.

He had bought some. The peaches were in a colander on the kitchen table, and some were overripe. He remembered that at dinner he had seen, out of the corner of his eye, that fruit flies had begun circling over the peaches.

He pulled his nightshirt over himself, stepped his claws into slippers, and padded downstairs to retrieve them. He also brought a tray and a lamp.

Still very quietly, he slid the tray into the open window, wedging it so it would bear the weight of the peaches and the lamp without falling either out or in. The colander of peaches, with fruit flies looping around it, was on the end of the tray that hung outside, and the lamp balanced it at the end inside the bedroom. Then the Wise Turkey sat softly again on the edge of his bed, letting a few squeaks rise from the mattress into the tangy cold air that was entering through the window, and he watched.

After a few minutes, more scratching and more squeaking, then silence, as the Wise Turkey watched the flies and the peaches in the flicker of the lamp. Soon enough there flew a dark form, too fast to see except as a shadow that darted between the lamp and the colander full of overripe peaches. It made no noise, none at all---wait, here and there were faint clicks, like the sound of one fingernail tapping another, or like the breaking of a thread drawn too tight.

His eyelids again became heavy and he could see the darting shadow no more. The peaches were now as cold as the night air, and no more fruit flies stirred over them. The oil of the lamp had burned low. He brought the tray in and set it aside, then looked out again to the eave.

The two babies were attached to their mother's belly, and her wings were folded over them. Her eyes looked directly at him, then blinked once, twice, and closed slowly as if she too were drowsy.

He slid the window shut and took the peaches back downstairs.

Then he took a paring knife, peeled a peach, cut away the brown spots of its flesh, separated the flesh from the pit, and ate it slowly.

And then he went to bed.

This story originally appeared at Weckuptothees! here.