Thanksgiving morning the chickens were doing more peering through windows than
one might like. The turkey was safely in the oven and out of sight but that
something unusual was in the offing no one could deny. I opened the door to
take the recycling to our bins and there was the question, “Are we invited?”
The best I could do was to promise some of the bread that I wouldn’t need for
the stuffing that had been deleted from the menu on account of me having a cold
and not feeling up to cooking. Mimo wanted to know if it was some kind of
conference.
“Sort of,” was the best I could manage. “People are coming because we’re
thankful.”
“We could be thankful,” Pecorino pointed out. “Often are.”
“Well why don’t you have you’re own gathering? I’ll supply peelings and maybe
some popcorn and you can have your own Thanksgiving assembly.”
They did…but that didn’t stop them from peering like waifs or Victorian orphans
through one window and then another.
On Black Friday my wife was offered one hundred dollars off a pelvic anatomy
workshop. I opened the kitchen door to throw out some leftovers and to ask the
chickens if they might want to take advantage of this opportunity.
“Don’t like the sound of ‘pelvic,’” said Appenzeller. “Can’t think of a rhyme.”
“Mimo objected, What’s that got to do with the price of cheese in China?
Nothing rhymes with ‘music,’ but does that stop us trying to sing?”
“She has a point,” said Pecorino.
I asked how rehearsals were coming. “Fair to middling,” was Appenzeller’s view.
Pecorino, “You’re always taking her side.”
“Am not.”
“Am too.”
Mimo, “What if I don’t need anyone on my side? What if I sing so well I need
no backing?”
Pecorino, “When fish become squirrels.”
I complimented her on an inventive expression. She preened.
“You just called it ‘Black Friday,’” said Mimo. “Funny name that. More than a
hint of tragedy.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “a strange name for a day devoted to consumption.”
“I thought that was yesterday,” Appenzeller said.
Pecorino looked up at the sky. “Apt, though. Very black up there. I miss
when you used to sit outside and drink a beer... or that other brown stuff.”
“Coffee? It’s too cold for that.”
“Too cold for a hot drink?”
“Too cold to sit outside.”
“What about us?”
“I assume Nature has prepared you for all weather.”
“Preparation’s one thing,” said Mimo. “Enjoying is another. Could you maybe
arrange more of those yellow, warm and mellow mornings?”
I suggested they look into migration.
“When the elephant bends his finger,” said Pecorino.
“When the burls glow red,” was Appenzeller’s offering.
“When Wittgenstein dances the Polka,” said Mimo.
Maybe some of that stale bread had an odd mold on it?
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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