25. Spotlight on Crepuscular Meadows: The Cuckoo house
Created | Updated Jul 19, 2020
25. Spotlight on Crepuscular Meadows: The Cuckoo house
Not many people live in cuckoo clocks. There are two reasons: one, the clocks are usually not roomy enough for people, and two, there's just enough room for one cuckoo.
Cuckoos are much smaller than people.
When the writer started out to write this chapter, he assumed that real cuckoos would not be found in Crepuscular Meadows or environs. Surprisingly, two cuckoo species were native to the area. This was not a surprise to the cuckoos, as they knew where they were, or at least we assume they did. (If they didn't, perhaps other birds told them. Or not. Cuckoos were said to be guilty of stealing other birds' nests, which would not have made them popular.)
Anyway, up on a hill overlooking the Hoohaw River after it emerged from the reservoir dam, there was a side street where a man named Geppetto Conti who had built a house shaped like a cuckoo clock. It was definitely big enough for humans to live in. As proof, consider that Mr. Conti had lived there for thirty years.
But no, Mr. Conti was not a toymaker despite his first name, which you may remember was the name of the man who created Pinocchio in a beloved story. You may well wonder why he would do this, and whether he dressed up as a cuckoo and emerged from the house every hour on the hour to say "Cuckoo."
Well, he didn't. You might justly call him eccentric, but he was far from crazy. No, he carefully maintained a grove of trees that attracted webworms and other caterpillars. Cuckoos feasted on caterpillars. Geppetto worked from home, as many people did in the days of Coronavirus, but he was doing it before the Covid virus showed up.
He had surveillance cameras hidden among his trees, and they had some sophisticated pattern recognition software that allowed them to recognize cuckoos. As soon as a cuckoo showed up, a little bell went off in Geppetto's study, and he scanned the screens so he could see the cuckoos.
This was either way too clever, or compulsive bordering on a disorder where we don't want to go.
Anyway, Crepuscularians were fairly jaded about eccentric behavior, so if thy had heard about Geppetto Conti at all, their response to information about his cuckoo watching would have elicited a collective yawn.
But what would a spotlight series on Crepuscular Meadows be without a visit to Mr. Conti's unique abode?
Well, it would be incomplete. And this writer does not like being incomplete, especially as he has plenty of time in which to track the comings and goings of Crepuscular Meadows.
So, late on a fine mid-July morning, the writer paid a call on the Cuckoo House. He had arranged the visit in advance, and Mr. Conti was eager to see him. Perhaps Mr. Conti was lonely for human contact.
Anyway, the house was lovely both inside and out. Mr. Conti showed the writer his surveillance screens, and the writer was lucky enough to see both a black-billed cuckoo
(which looked something like this:
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-billed_Cuckoo/id?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjPTh8bnZ6gIVBYTICh33qgneEAAYASAAEgKPqfD_BwE)
and a yellow-billed cuckoo
(http://abcbirds.org/bird/yellow-billed-cuckoo/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5aTxqbrZ6gIV9AiICR1J9gYFEAAYASAAEgLELvD_BwE)
And what kind of cuckoo house wouldn't have cuckoo clock or two? Certainly not Mr. Conti's. Not surprisingly he turned out to be something of a collector.
As it turned out, the writer had made a bit of a mistake, which he was soon to realize. While he was wrapping up his interview, Noon rolled around. In a house full of cuckoo clocks, this means a very long sequence of cuckoo calls. Considering that Mr. Conti had dozens (or it seemed like hundreds) of the clocks, the sound was unlike anything the writer had heard or wished to hear again.
So, if the reader likes the sound of cuckoo cocks, and wishes to hear them, and if Mr. Conti is still doing his thing, the reader is advised to pay a call on him.
