The Cranberry Tales - The Zoo Fence Mobile Version

Cantachiaro is a chicken, a Rhode Island Red rooster, who was born on a poorly kept farm in a little village in Cranberry County, Maine to a large flock destined for the soup pot. One day when Cantachiaro was only a few weeks old, Peter and Anna Wensleydale drove from their home some miles away to the farm where Cantachiaro lived.

“We have a couple of dozen laying hens,” the Wensleydales told the farmer, “which we allow to roam free in the grass and among the trees, and we’re worried about foxes. So, we’re looking for a rooster to provide them protection.”

The farmer walked Peter and Anna from his house over to a pen where far too many chickens were cooped up in much too little space.

“If it’s protection from foxes you’re looking for, the bird you want is that one there with the tall tail feathers,” the farmer said, pointing out a particularly large, mean looking creature. “He’s a tough one, I can tell you from personal experience.”

Inclined to rely on the farmer’s expertise, Peter was about to agree when Anna spoke up.

“There’s the one for us,” Anna said, pointing into the midst of the flock at a small bird that displayed no particularly distinguishing characteristics except considerable evidence of having been beat up on rather badly and that, in addition, was still too young to determine for sure whether it was a male or a female.

“No, you don’t want that one,” the farmer replied, without having made any real effort to notice which bird Anna had indicated. “You’re better off with the one I said.”

“Be that as it may, this is the bird for us,” Anna insisted, following her choice closely with her eyes as it moved or was pushed about the overcrowded enclosure.

“You might as well save us all a lot of time,” Peter said to the farmer, “and go along with her now, because eventually you will anyway.”

“Suit yourselves,” the man grumbled. And then, without enthusiasm, he opened the gate, and waded into the sea of chickens to catch the animal Anna had selected. Several times, he surfaced with a bird only to be sent back under by Anna’s decree that “That’s not him,” until finally she was satisfied he had the right one in hand.

The farmer’s last comment, after Peter and Anna paid him a price that seemed to them too much by twice (“It’s not so much the bird I’m charging you for,” the farmer had said, “as the selection process”), was to reaffirm the likelihood that their choice was probably a hen and not a rooster anyway, so they’d eventually be back for the creature he had recommended in the first instance.

“What if he’s right,” Peter asked Anna in the car as they drove home, the chicken safely captured in a cardboard box they had obtained earlier from the supermarket just for the purpose, “and this one’s not a rooster?”

“He’s a rooster,” Anna said with confidence, “I can tell.” A few moments later, she added, “But if he isn’t, he goes to Sweden for a sex change operation before I go back to that grouch to admit it!” Presently, Anna turned back to Peter, and asked, “What do you suppose his name is?”

“Cantachiaro,” Peter said, with certainty. “The rooster’s name is Cantachiaro.”

“Cantachiaro? That sounds Italian,” Anna said.

“Yes, it is,” Peter replied. “It means ‘sing clear.’ Actually, it’s his family name.”

“It’s his family name,” Anna repeated flatly, without expression. “And have the Cantachiaro’s been in the United States a long time, Peter?” At that she could not hold back her laughter, for she was not, of course, taking Peter the least bit seriously. But he was not to be daunted.

“Yes,” he said, “they have. Fact is, his family came over with Christopher Columbus. The story is that Cantachiaro’s great, great, or whatever it would be, grandfather woke up the crew of the Santa Maria just in time to keep their ship from running aground on Plymouth Rock.”

“Plymouth Rock?” Anna replied, incredulously. “Columbus didn’t run aground at Plymouth Rock. That was the pilgrims, on the Mayflower.”

“Exactly,” Peter affirmed, “and they wouldn’t have either, if they had had Cantachiaro’s grandfather aboard.”

Bouncing around inside the cardboard box on the back seat of the Wensleydale’s car, Cantachiaro considered the morning’s activities, and thought about what he could hear of Peter’s and Anna’s conversation. At first, of course, he had been frightened and confused by having been taken away from home so abruptly, even though he knew that those rundown acres were no fit home for anyone and nowhere he’d be likely to miss. But, bad as it was, it was the only home he knew. Now, he wondered, what lies ahead.

They seem like a nice pair, these two, for humans, the rooster thought to himself. Certainly, she’s the first of any species I’ve ever known to stand up to that old farmer, and get away with it. That alone is a sign of progress. And this fellow with her seems thoughtful and sensitive. That’ll be a refreshing change. Still, however it unfolds, it’s going to be different, and so it’s bound to be a little scary, at least at first. But, considering all things, I believe it’s going to be alright. Shortly, very softly, he prayed, “Thank you, God.” Then, having put his fears to rest, he sat back in the box to enjoy the ride. One question he couldn’t seem to get out of his mind, though: How had Peter Wensleydale come to find out about Nonno Pasquale’s passage on the Santa Maria?

When they got home, Peter and Anna made the mistake of letting Cantachiaro loose among the hens right away. At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do, but almost immediately, every one of the hens took to pecking at the new arrival, and generally mistreating him in a variety of fierce ways. The situation got so far out of hand that Peter and Anna feared for the bird’s life.

“I guess that’s not the way to introduce a rooster to the flock,” Peter observed, after rescuing Cantachiaro.

“I think the farmer may have been partly right,” Anna remarked, “in that Cantachiaro may still be so young that his hormones haven’t started flowing. He doesn’t know he’s a rooster yet. Neither do the hens.”

Peter set up a fenced-in area for Cantachiaro attached to the hens’ enclosure, so that, although they were separated by chicken wire, they were constantly exposed to one another. Of course, most of the day the hens were loose ranging, but they’d come back now and again for feed or to lay an egg, and they had to walk right past Cantachiaro to do so, affording all of them numerous opportunities to make acquaintance a little more gently. Also, this arrangement offered a controlled, protected setting for Cantachiaro to become accustomed to his new environment and to meet some of the other inhabitants of the place.

The first to present themselves were the two cats, Selene and Pilikia. Both are Persians, very long haired Persians. And that is nearly all that they have in common. To hear her tell it, Selene is the Queen Mother of the Wensleydale homestead, and she behaves accordingly. Of course, just then she had good reason to walk particularly tall, having recently won a Blue Ribbon at the Cranberry County Fair for Best Mouser.

The incident for which she had been singled out and applauded by every species at the Fair (except perhaps the mice, although even they had to acknowledge her prowess, if they might have wished that she practiced it on some other planet) took place towards the end of the summer in the Wensleydale home at a space where the floorboards meet the chimney, which a gray field mouse had discovered as a potential access to cozy winter quarters. Having heard him scratching about under the floor, Selene set herself up at the base of the chimney, there to remain absolutely motionless for four hours, even as the mouse peeked into the room over the floorboards numerous times, sniffing this way and that for signs of danger. Clearly, his nose had been reporting unmistakable evidence of Selene’s presence, but as she never moved or made a sound, not even once during the long vigil, neither his huge, shiny black eyes nor his pie-plate ears could confirm what his nose was telling him. Finally, his caution overruled by appetite and appearances, he set about moving his effects into the house, and then, only then, when the mouse’s guard was fully down, Selene had struck, quickly and with lethal accuracy.

“It’s not that I have anything personal against mice, you understand,” she had told Ron Harrigan, a local television news reporter, in an on-air interview following the presentation of her award. “It’s just that I don’t like them in the house. And besides,” she added, in a totally unnecessary afterthought, “I’m a cat.” With that, she had turned right away from the camera, and proceeded to lick her fur, a process she practices day and night indoors and out, to the effect that she is probably the cleanest cat in the county as well as the best mouser. In fact, Peter and Anna had suggested that Selene enter herself in that category at the Fair, too.

“Will the judges expect to touch me?” Selene had asked.

“Probably,” Peter said, noting, “After all, to measure the depth of your cleanliness, they’ll need to run their hands through your fur and perhaps even … ”

“Run their filthy hands through my fur?” Selene scoffed. “Not in this lifetime!” At that, she had flicked her long, blue-cream colored tail several times, turned her back on Peter and Anna and the entire subject, and disappeared.

“Welcome to my home,” were Selene’s first words to Cantachiaro, when she deigned to permit him the honor of her acquaintance. Then, she allowed, “I’m sure you will make a fine addition to the staff.”

This confused Cantachiaro considerably, but just in case he responded, “Thank you, ma’am,” reflecting an attitude toward her which Selene thoroughly approved of, but which Pilikia lost no time in erasing.

“Pay no attention to Selene,” Pilikia told Cantachiaro when he related the encounter to her. “Actually, she’s very nice, only she doesn’t know it, and she won’t let anyone close enough to convince her. Selene’s function here is to catch mice, and she does that very nicely. As for the rest, she’s just one of us.”

“And what is your function?” Cantachiaro asked Pilikia.

Pilikia laughed. “My function? Umm,” she said, scratching the top of her head with a hind paw, “I never thought about it.”

“From what I’ve observed,” Cantachiaro said to her, “I’d guess your function is the jester.” And it was true, he had noticed from his small enclosure that Pilikia seemed to like to play tricks on others, and she never seemed to take anything seriously.

“The jester,” Pilikia repeated, thoughtfully. “I believe you’re right. The one who makes them laugh. Preferably at themselves.” With that, she rolled over onto her back, and laughed heartily.

Truth to tell, Pilikia spends a lot of time on her back. “Do you suppose,” Anna once wondered out loud, “it’s got anything to do with her tortoise shell coloring? Perhaps she’s pretending to be a turtle turned upside down, feet and tail flapping about in the air.”

One fall, a neighbor, who had stopped by the house to share fresh-picked wild blueberries, admired Pilikia lying on the floor, stretched out on her back.

“Nice rug you got there,” he said, indicating the cat.

“Careful stepping on it,” Peter replied, “That rug’s still alive.”

“Still alive, you say? That wouldn’t be some of Old Man d’Wayne’s work, would it?”

Old Man d’Wayne is so called precisely because he is an old man, a very old man. “The way my mother related it to me,” Peter was told by Ernest Bestford, the fellow whose Jersey cow, Cream ’n Sugar, provides the Wensleydales milk, “was, Old Man d’Wayne came to this town about a hundred and fifty years ago, before it even was a town, and built the house he was later to be born in. Still lives in it, too.”

d’Wayne grew up to become a taxidermist, and over the century or more that he’s been practicing, he has earned a reputation for excellence that is respected by hunters and sportsmen of every variety, locals and tourists alike. Indeed, so skilled are his hands that when he is done it is truly hard to tell the difference between the beast alive and the beast stuffed. Fact is, a while back, for some years no one had observed d’Wayne’s wife Claudia move from the maple rocker by the wood stove in their living room, and folks were beginning to wonder, until, that is, Bernard the Mailman reported she reached out her right arm when he delivered a letter from their son August, whom they hadn’t seen or heard from since he’d gone north to Canada to join the army.

Anyway, Pilikia was the only one of the Wensleydale animals who managed to get into Cantachiaro’s pen with him. She scratched a passage in the dirt next to a tree where Peter hadn’t fastened the fence quite so tightly as elsewhere. Actually, there probably wouldn’t have been any way Peter could have kept Pilikia out of that pen (or, for that matter, anywhere else her curiosity drew her to), for Pilikia loves poking around into things, and she loves dirt, and wherever she can find an opportunity to combine the two, so much the better. If Selene is obsessive, perhaps even compulsive, about grooming herself, Pilikia more than makes up for her the other way around. She seems always to leave a cloud of dust behind her, and not infrequently she can be observed trailing a bit of twig, or perhaps even a small branch, caught in her fur, or the remains of a spider web wrapped about her tail. There is no trick to guessing what Pilikia has been up to, for she invariably drags the telltale evidence behind her.

As for mousing, that traditional feline function is not this cat’s forte. She did catch a small vole some time ago in Anna’s art studio, but then, once she had it in her grip, she didn’t know what to do with it, so she let it go. Besides, just then, a row at the birdfeeder between a chickadee and a nuthatch caught her attention, and she was suddenly far more intrigued by what mischief she could get into there. (“That’s not the way it was,” Pilikia had insisted to Selene at the time. “And I knew very well what to do with it. But it stunk so, I wanted to be rid of the thing. Have you ever put your nose up against a vole? Even I find them offensive smelling! Anyway, he had said he was only on an errand, with no intention of moving in.”)

Within a few short weeks of his arrival from the farm, Cantachiaro showed increasing evidence of reaching into adulthood. His permanent feathers filled out strong and bright, and his body took on the special shape of a rooster –the high, erect neck, and the long, flared tail. In addition, there began growing a spur on the back of each of his legs.

“What’re those?” Pilikia asked him one day, indicating his spurs. “They’re not warts, are they? If so, I can cure them.”

“They may look like warts now, Pilikia,” Cantachiaro replied, stretching out now one leg, now the other, to show off the new growth, “but once they’re fully developed and sharpened, pity the fox who comes across them!”

This fellow was fast becoming a very different bird than had gotten Anna’s attention in that overcrowded pen, and everyone noticed it, including himself, judging from the way he began to strut about his temporary enclosure. But the real evidence of Cantachiaro’s maturity came early one morning while Peter and Anna and nearly everyone else were still asleep.

“What was THAT!” Anna shouted, as she was awakened with a start.

“What was what?” Peter asked, burying his head deeper into his pillow.

“I don’t know, but I just heard the most outrageous noise,” Anna said, sitting up. “It sounded like … well, like a crow swallowing a frog and then bringing it up.”

By now, everyone was awake, and so they all heard the noise when it next occurred. And Anna had been quite right. It did sound like a crow swallowing a frog and then bringing it up.

“I have no idea,” Peter said as, still half asleep, he put on his bathrobe, and groped across the room to look out the window into the dark night outside. But then, in an instant, he knew; just as soon, that is, as he noticed that it was no longer fully dark. If he could see the first rays of dawn creeping through the trees across the clearing, Peter thought to himself, then so could Cantachiaro.

“It’s Cantachiaro!” Peter exclaimed, joyfully. “He’s crowing to the dawn.”

Selene grumbled. “Don’t tell me we’re going to have to listen to that every morning.”

“He’ll get better at it, Selene,” Peter assured her. “This was his first time, and his voice is just coming in.”

“Better and louder,” Anna added. “You know, Peter, Selene may be right. Yesterday may have been the last morning we will ever awaken on our own.”

Seeing her point, Peter said, “Or be able to sleep in.”

“As long as we’re all up,” Pilikia announced gaily, racing across the floor at full gallop from nowhere in particular to nowhere else in particular, “let’s play a game!”

Selene alone answered her, with a threatening hiss followed by a very dirty look.

Peter sat down on the bed beside Anna. “I think this means Cantachiaro’s ready to leave the pen,” he said, “and join the flock.”

“Agreed,” Anna nodded. And so it was.

That day, Cantachiaro and the hens took to each other like bread and butter. In fact, everyone seemed pleased to have Cantachiaro loose. Everyone, that is, except Tancredi.

Until the morning Cantachiaro was released, and the holding pen torn down, Tancredi hadn’t paid the new bird much mind, figuring that anything fenced in didn’t need his protection, the provision of which Tancredi sees as his primary contribution to this family, and anyway, as far as he is concerned, seen one chicken, seen ’em all. But when Cantachiaro was set free, and began acting differently than the hens, the two of them –dog and rooster –crossed.

At that time, Tancredi had been with Peter and Anna a few years, ever since they intercepted him when he was just a puppy about to be taken on a one-way trip to the pound. He had been born underneath a small mobile home around the other side of the hill from the Wensleydale’s property, in a town named after the American patriot, Thomas Paine, which circumstance eventually, but unavoidably, generated the bad, but good-natured joke, “Tancredi, the main pain from Paine, Maine.”

Tancredi is a big dog, in the same sense that a California redwood is a big tree. There is almost certainly German shepherd or Siberian husky or Labrador retriever, or a combination of those, in him. But a lot of other stuff, too. Actually, no one knew for sure who his father was, and it is anyone’s guess just what kind of dog his mother is. So, by birth, Tancredi was a mutt, or what they call in polite society “a mixed breed.” To Peter and Anna, who fell in love with him just as they had with each other some fourteen years before, at first sight, he is a Paine’s retriever. “And a mighty fine specimen of the breed he is at that,” Peter says to visitors with such a straight face that many are reluctant to admit they have never seen a Paine’s retriever before or even heard of the breed.

“Good pointer, is he?” they will ask, thoughtfully stroking their chin with their hand.

“Can’t speak to that,” Peter might reply, “but he heels very nicely on the leash. If you can keep up with him, that is.”

Of course, judging from the way Tancredi loves to bound through the woods, leaping into the air from bush to boulder to tree stump, Anna is convinced there is some deer in him. And his penchant for driving his snout deep into every hole in the ground in summer and every snow bank in winter, sniffing for some unknown treasure, leads everyone to wonder whether he doesn’t have an oil wildcatter or gold prospector somewhere in his background.

“What’s he looking for, anyway?” Selene once asked about Tancredi’s endless searching.

“Who knows,” Pilikia replied, “but just imagine the excitement should he ever find it!”

Another extraordinary thing about Tancredi is his tail. It virtually never stops wagging.

“Can he possibly be that happy?” Anna wondered one evening, to which Selene opined, “If you ask me, I think something’s broken.”

But Tancredi’s finest characteristic, if one has to be chosen, is his loyalty as a watchdog. In fact, so good is he at that, that that first morning when Cantachiaro went to take his proper place as the rooster among the flock, Tancredi had tried to protect the hens from him!

“We’ve got a problem,” Peter said to Anna, when he had finally separated the rooster and the dog, at some risk to himself. “Tancredi thinks Cantachiaro is beating up on the hens, and Cantachiaro thinks Tancredi is a fox.”

“Perhaps one of us had better have a talk with them,” Anna suggested.

“I think it had best be me,” Peter agreed. “From the looks of it, this is a man kind of problem.”

“Okay. But, Peter, don’t preach to them.”

Here, if reluctantly, Peter had to admit that Anna had a point, he did have a tendency to preach. Ever since he and Anna had built this home in the woods, and started a new life after leaving the city and its values, Peter had come to feel so good about himself and everything else that he wanted to share his newly discovered vision with all the world, sometimes even if he had to shove it down their throats. But it hadn’t come to him that way, and, in his heart, he knew it couldn’t be brought to anyone else that way either.

Anyway, later that day, Peter called Tancredi and Cantachiaro together under the large apple tree beside the vegetable garden. He sat down on the ground, and leaned against the tree trunk.

“Come on over here, next to me,” Peter said to them.

Tancredi looked at Cantachiaro, and Cantachiaro looked at Tancredi, and if looks could kill, Peter would have had to gather Anna and the rest together for a double grave funeral right there, right then. “Dearly Beloved,” he might have said, “we are gathered here to lay to rest two of your most beautiful, stubborn to the end.” Happily, it hadn’t come to that, for finally they agreed to sit, but only if Peter promised to remain between them.

So, they sat there, the three of them, leaning against the apple tree. Tancredi on the left, Cantachiaro on the right, and Peter in the middle.

“Well, gentlemen, what are we going to do about you two?” Peter asked, his hands gently patting his two friends.

Tancredi was the first to speak. “Peter,” he began, “it has always been my function to protect this place from foxes and the like. I know I fool around a lot, and get into things and places you and Anna would rather I didn’t, but I thought I was doing a pretty good job.”

“You’re doing a wonderful job!” Peter exclaimed. “There’s no better watchdog in the county.”

“Then what’s he doing here?” Tancredi growled, glaring at Cantachiaro.

“What am I doing here?” Cantachiaro asked with vigor. “I’ll tell you what I’m doing here. I’m here to do for the hens what you can never do. For one thing, my presence is going to make the hens’ eggs a lot more nourishing for all of you.”

“Is that true, Peter?” Tancredi asked.

“Yes,” Peter replied. “It has something to do with zinc content, I think. Anna would know more about that, though. She was the biology major.”

“And that’s just for starters,” Cantachiaro continued. “I know what the hens need to eat when they’re foraging, and I know where to find it. That bagged stuff from the feed store is fine as far as it goes, but without the grubs and grasshoppers I can turn up, the hens would start dropping like flies.” At that, almost certainly for effect, Cantachiaro caught a moose fly on the wing, and swallowed it in a single gulp.

“Is that true, Peter?” Tancredi asked again.

“Well, perhaps slightly exaggerated for emphasis,” Peter replied this time, “but, yes, basically, he’s right.”

“And I’m the one,” Cantachiaro went on, “who’ll keep the hens together, and who’ll find them when they’re lost, or retrieve them when they wander.”

“He’s right there, too, Tancredi,” Peter said. “You remember how much trouble you and I had locating …”

“Yes,” the dog said, “I remember.”

“Finally, as regards the question of foxes …” Here, Cantachiaro was about to make what he considered his most telling point when he was interrupted in mid-sentence by Pilikia, who was squirming under and between his legs.

“Pilikia, what are you doing here?” Peter asked, lifting her onto his lap.

“I saw you three down here,” she said, “and I hoped maybe you were having a party. So, what’s this about foxes?”

“Tancredi and Cantachiaro are having a little difficulty accepting each other’s role in protecting the hens, Pilikia,” Peter explained. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Umm,” Pilikia replied, sitting up straight, “I see.” Then, thoroughly ignoring Peter’s brush-off, she addressed the dog and the rooster. “Since you’re both perfectly suited to this function, it seems to me the ideal resolution is to share it. Cantachiaro’s likely to be with the hens more of the time, probably even all of the time, so I suggest he tailor his defense posture to meet a close in or last line, ditch-to-trench kind of requirement. Tancredi’s routine, on the other hand, which takes him wandering about the full extent of the property and often out of sight, is better directed at filling a long-range patrol or screen pattern. Of course, both of you should remain constantly alert to respond to an alarm from the other, or any of the rest of us, whenever and wherever required. It’s called flexible response, variable depth force deployment, isn’t it, Peter?”

Peter looked at Pilikia. Tancredi looked at Pilikia. Cantachiaro looked at Pilikia. Not a one of them uttered a word. Pilikia smiled, and walked off to engage a red squirrel chattering away high up in the cedars next to the woodshed.

Hours later, after the evening meal, as casually as he could, Peter asked Anna if she had noticed Pilikia’s getting any unusual books or magazines in the mail.

“Unusual?” Anna said. “How do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Peter answered, “politico-military affairs, tactics and strategy. That kind of thing.”

“No, of course not,” Anna said. “Why do you ask?”

Peter shrugged. “Oh, nothing. Nothing important.”

“By the way, Peter,” Anna asked, “did you get that hens business sorted out between Tancredi and Cantachiaro?”

“What, that?” Peter said. “Oh, sure, no problem.”

So, with that issue resolved, life went on unfolding nicely, until one day not so long ago.

It was a clear, crisp late fall morning, when many of the tourists and most of the buzzing, biting insects had left the state ahead of the frigid winter about to begin. There occurred an incident at the Wensleydale place that no one who lives there, and at least two others, are likely ever to forget. It began, I suppose you could say, when Pilikia was stretched out, on her back of course, across the tar road at the end of the gravel driveway. She had no business being on the road, and had been warned innumerable times by Peter and Anna to stay off it.

“But don’t you see,” Pilikia would complain, “under the sun, the tar gets warm and soft and cozy. You should try it, Selene.”

To which Selene would respond, “Sticky bits of tar in my fur? Not likely!”

And Peter or Anna would reply, “Soft and warm or not, Pilikia, you are to stay off the road.”

And the cat would whine, “But …”

To which the humans would retort, “We know what you’re about to say, that most of the year we get virtually no traffic up here, and that’s true. But that’s not the point. Roads are for cars, not for cats. Is that clear?”

It was clear enough, but nonetheless ignored.

Anyway, that day Peter was off with Iddu, a very old Willys Jeep truck, felling trees for the following year’s firewood, and Anna was busy in the vegetable garden, gathering in the last of the harvest and cleaning up behind the summer’s activity. Cantachiaro and the hens, although out of sight, could be heard not far off, clucking about in the underbrush, feeding on seeds and berries, and socializing. Selene had set herself atop Simone, the Wensleydale’s aging Volvo sedan parked at the front door, licking her fur clean for the umpteenth time that day. (“It gets just as warm here, but without the sticky tar. Besides, it’s a Volvo.”) Tancredi was, well, Tancredi was somewhere.

And Pilikia was up on the road, lying on her back in the sun. Until, that is, a roar in her ears opened her eyes, and she saw a car looming directly overhead, just inches from running her over.

In less than a fraction of a microinstant, Pilikia was on her feet, turned tail, off the road, and racing down the driveway. She dared not take the time or spare the energy to look back, but her senses told her that the car had turned into the Wensleydale’s driveway, too, and was following right behind her, as indeed it was.

Now, when Selene heard the car approaching, and saw the fright in Pilikia’s face as the cat turned the corner and scurried to hide under the tool shop, she realized, of course, that something was amiss. But Selene knew Pilikia far too well not to suspect that whatever was underway was probably Pilikia’s doing and not necessarily to be taken seriously. So, she held her place and watched, poised to take whatever action may be appropriate.

Presently, the car came to a stop at the base of the driveway. Cantachiaro heard, and noticed. He asked the hens to hush and be still while he observed. Anna stood up, and peered over the tomato plants. She didn’t recognize the car. It had an out-of-state license plate, and was a vehicle she had never seen before. She didn’t recognize the driver of the car either, and neither did she recognize the passenger who got out with a rifle slung under his arm, and who began walking toward the house.

Suddenly, Anna was afraid. She hated the feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach. It was a feeling she hadn’t felt since she and Peter had come here from the city. In fact, this feeling had been one of the reasons they had left the city. Now, she was feeling it again. Where was Peter? Where was help?

Perhaps in answer to Anna’s silent call, Selene released a long, fierce hiss from her spot atop Simone, right into the man’s face as he passed the Volvo on his way to the front door of the house. Cantachiaro took Selene’s initiative as his cue, and, thrusting his neck and head skyward, he let out an extended, piercing cry, summoning Tancredi.

“A fox!” he crowed, as loudly and as clearly as his lungs would bellow. “A FOX!” With that, the rooster jumped and flapped himself into the air, and flew at the stranger, legs stretched out, spurs chest high and fully exposed, targeted for the man’s face and eyes.

Less than a moment later, out of the woods, streaking across the lawn at twice the speed of lightning, appeared Tancredi, his teeth bared, his intentions clear.

It didn’t take but a couple of seconds for the man to realize he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He hurtled back to the car, one arm protecting his face from Cantachiaro, the other holding off Tancredi from his legs, and his mouth shouting to his friend at the steering wheel, “Get us out of here!” Their automobile was already in reverse gear, and moving away when the man closed the car door behind him, rolling up the window as fast as the mechanism would allow. The spinning tires kicked up gravel and dust that did not fully settle until long after the car could no longer be heard hastily retreating up the paved road. The incident was over.

But not the talk of it. Early that evening, when he had returned from woodcutting, and been apprised of what had transpired in his absence, Peter sat down with Anna to tell the animals how pleased and proud he was of their performance.

“I’m the one who sounded the first alarm,” Pilikia reminded everyone, taking an exaggerated bow.

“Only because you were sprawled across the road where you didn’t belong,” Anna reminded her. “Still, I don’t know what I would have done without you. All of you.”

“What impresses me most,” Peter observed, “is not the action you took, although that was impressive enough –Goodness knows, it was for those intruders! –but the fact that you took it together. Especially you two,” here Peter indicated Tancredi and Cantachiaro, “and the way you instantly and instinctively worked in concert.” As Tancredi’s tail wagged, and Cantachiaro’s chest swelled, Peter added, with just a hint of a smile, “It’s called double-teaming, isn’t it, Pilikia?”

Pilikia looked at Peter, and then, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, she allowed one eye to close in a wink. Pilikia has a habit of doing that frequently enough that Anna mentioned it during one of their annual visits to the veterinarian. He said he had never seen or heard of such a thing, but that over the years he had come to the expert medical opinion never to be surprised at anything a cat might do.

Some days later, Cantachiaro and Tancredi were sitting together of an afternoon, chatting in the shade under the apple tree where they had first made peace. Our Tree, the two of them had come to call it. Some of the hens were settled there with them, basking in the fall quiet. Four or five others had perched in the branches overhead, and were preening themselves. The rest were scratching about lazily in the grass nearby. Presently, Pilikia happened along.

“You’ve been up the road to the Roomey’s, haven’t you?” Tancredi asked her.

Wendell and Susanne Roomey live up the road a short piece with their young daughter and a cat, a horse, and several sheep. The Wensleydale and Roomey animals have become generally good friends, too good friends the humans sometimes think, especially after having to walk up or down the road in search of their wandering own or to return a wandering other. In fact, the Roomey cat, a short-haired male named Purrfect, spends a good deal of time at the Wensleydale place, having developed a particular affection, mostly unrequited so far as anyone could tell, for Selene. It isn’t that Selene has no interest in matters of a romantic nature, so long as they are conducted with dignity, of course, but rather it is that she has yet to get over Tomas, her first true love, whom Selene met in Gazinga when she and Pilikia lived there with Peter and Anna while Peter was with the American Embassy there. In fact, when the Wensleydales returned to the United States, eventually to move to Cranberry County, Selene considered staying in Gazinga with Tomas. Instead, she chose to come home with her family; but she left a piece of her heart behind. Often, Selene can be observed sitting atop a piece of furniture next to a window, staring without expression into the distance. “It’s Tomas, isn’t it?” Pilikia once asked her. Selene did not say, and likely never will.

Wendell Roomey works at home much of the time. He is a jack of many trades, but he is especially adept at gunsmithing, and volleys of gunshots are often heard from their place as he tests or adjusts his handiwork. (Once, after a particularly lengthy series of rapid gunfire, a visitor asked Peter for an explanation. “Oh, pay no attention to that,” Peter had said, keeping a straight face. “It’s just a boundary dispute between neighbors. Been going on for generations.”)

“Maybe I have been up to the Roomey’s,” Pilikia said, taking a place next to her friends, “and maybe I haven’t.” Then, after a moment, she spoke again. “How’d you know, anyway?”

“Look at you,” Cantachiaro answered. “You’re covered with bits of wool.”

“Where else could you have gotten that,” Tancredi asked, “except among the Roomey’s sheep?”

“Fine, then, you two smarties,” Pilikia retorted, in good nature, “if you know so much, tell me what I learned up there.”

“That,” her two friends said as one, “we can’t do.”

“I thought as much,” Pilikia continued, looking furtively to the left and to the right, then coming in close, and taking on a decidedly conspiratorial tone. “Feast on this tidbit you won’t hear on the evening news.”

The dog and the rooster leaned over toward the cat, very close, and whispered, “We’re listening.”

Pilikia smiled. This cat loves secrets and plots and mischief of all kinds. She particularly loves it when others get into the mood of it, too. “This is what Purrfect just told me,” she began, savoring each word. “This morning, two fellows drove in to the Roomey’s to have the sights on their hunting rifles calibrated by Wendell Roomey. Purrfect overheard them telling about how they had intended to come by a few days ago, but having lost their way, they had stopped at a house along the road to ask for directions, and in the process had very nearly lost their lives. Apparently, and these are not my words, mind you, but Purrfect’s, and he was only quoting what he heard, these two men told Wendell they were attacked out of the blue ‘by a lunatic cat, a rabid dog, and some kind of unidentified flying feathered thing’.”

“FLYING FEATHERED THING?” Cantachiaro shouted, frightening the hens out of the branches overhead, which in turn set into commotion the rest of the flock.

“Unidentified flying feathered thing,” Pilikia corrected him.

Cantachiaro made a face, then rose to his feet, and began walking in tight circles, flapping his wings. “I knew we should not have let that fox get away,” he muttered.

“Cantachiaro,” Tancredi said softly, trying to calm his friend, “I think Pilikia’s point is that the fox we chased off was not a fox, but one of Wendell Roomey’s clients.”

“Not a fox?” the bird replied, getting really upset now. “Don’t tell me that fox was not a fox,” he huffed, setting off now toward the lawn, and motioning the hens to accompany him, “I know a fox when I see one.” Cantachiaro continued to grumble and to flap his wings vigorously as he and the hens wandered across the lawn toward the chicken house.

After a few moments, Tancredi turned to Pilikia. “I wonder which ‘lunatic cat’ the fellow meant, Selene or you?”

Pilikia looked at Tancredi, and very slowly closed one eyelid in a wink, and then rolled over onto her back.

In the house enjoying a tea break, Peter and Anna could hear Tancredi and Pilikia as they suddenly broke into laughter under the apple tree.

–next– –others– –home–