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.
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