First thing—which wasn’t very early this morning, on account of there
having been a Burns Supper hereabouts yesterday evening—I put some leftover
haggis out for the chickens. Hamish looked at me, looked at his bowl (which is
beside that door), looked at me, as if to say, “You missed.”
I explained I had already given him a full measure of leftovers and I was
curious to see what the chickens would make of a small portion. Maybe I’d get
something to write about? If dogs could roll their eyes, that’s what I would
have seen.
After breakfast I was working at the computer. Hamish went and stood
by the sliding door of my office. As in poker, there was a tell: he sauntered
out, “Nothing happening here…just going for a wee wander.” Out into the garden
he went, very clearly not heading towards where, on the far side of the house,
the leftover haggis lay. Do you know the chickens gobbled not only the haggis,
but also the chunk of casein, or whatever it was, that the meat rested in?
Or so I might have imagined if they hadn’t just then appeared from a
different direction.
Mimo, “So what was that about then?”
“What was what?”
Appenzeller, “The dog said you had people over for Burns night. Should we be
worried?”
“Did you go to sleep and wake up just fine?”
Pecorino, “We did.”
“Well then, why worry?”
Mimo, “But Burns…”
“He’s a poet.”
Appenzeller, “A poet?”
“Good with words?”
Pecorino, “We don’t have poets.”
“No?”
Appenzeller, “Chickens long ago decided they were a waste of space.”
“So there were once chicken poets and you abandoned the whole idea?”
Mimo, “Yup.”
“Is this what one would call a local verdict or somewhat widespread?”
Mimo, (confidently), “The latter.”
“So among the avians any kind of poetry is right out?”
Mimo, “Can’t speak for crows and so on, but we don’t like ambiguity.”
“How so?”
Mimo, “Either there is a possum in the bushes or there is not: binary. We
don’t want information wrapped in some kind of thick binding.”
“But what if the words revealed something new?”
Pecorino, “Ooooh, new! We do like new. Got any new food?”
“How about some haggis?”
The murder has left our neighborhood. The word, “deployed,” popped
into my brain when I was walking Hamish and suddenly the whole scheme was
revealed—a stealth (try finding crows with radar) force training in suburbia,
hidden in plain sight, and now who-knows-where…on a mission to do
who-knows-what. Possibly we’ll never know. Perhaps some time soon we’ll open
a newspaper and read that the U.S. has been deploying crows to counter a
threat?
The one dark moment in an otherwise enjoyable evening was hearing a
brief sketch—only because I asked—of how, in this country that is being made
great again, people undergoing rounds of chemotherapy and other sapping
treatment have to put in eight hour days if they want to keep health insurance.
When asked, in turn how I was, I thought it best to lighten the tone a bit,
and so explained that I had been attacked by a pack of feral dermatologists,
who left wounds on my nose and wallet.
Then I told this joke:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/etczp4/hugh_lauries_hilarious_story_of_working_with_a/
<https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/etczp4/hugh_lauries_hilarious_story_of_working_with_a/>
The store-bought haggis was good, but not as good as when T. makes it.
We toasted, “absent friends,” which of course included you. And my dad.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
