NIT WIT NEWZ — September 2022

(Nit Wit Newz is an unauthorized, often unreliable, on-line news source designed to keep Manor residents abreast of the inconsequential, trifling, and superficial events that dramatically shape and inform our everyday lives here at Rogue Valley Manor.

MORNING BECOMES PROTECTIVE

Scene: The Office of the Rogue Valley Manor Executive Director.

Date: The present

In attendance:  Executive Director (ED) of Rogue Valley Manor and Manager of the Work-Order Desk (MOWOD) at RVM.

(MOWOD excitedly enters the office) We did it! We did it!

(ED) Well, you look pretty pleased about something.

(MOWOD) Indeed, I am. And you will be, too. Do you remember the work order you sent to us several months ago about the turkeys and the problem they’re causing on campus?

(ED) Oh, sure, I remember. We reached out to everyone we could think of for help. Yeah, we tried nets, snares, cages, even cut-out cardboard coyotes—nothing has worked.

(MOWOD)  Until now.

(ED) You mean…

(MOWOD) Yep.

(ED) Holy mackerel, tell me.

(MOWOD) Well, we decided to tap into the extraordinary intellectual resource we have here at RVM.

(ED) And what would that be?

(MOWOD)  The minds of our residents.  We’ve got some brilliant people up here with years of experience in all sorts of fields of study. So I got a few of them together and discussed the turkey proliferation problem that you outlined in your work order.

(ED)  O.K., I’m listening.

(MOWOD)  Our team is made up of four residents:  M.T. Bowles, he’s a specialist in animal nutrition; a brilliant pharmaceutical chemist, Tess Toob; Les Noyes, he’s a national renowned acoustical engineer;  and Abel Craftsman, he can put  together anything.

(ED) So, what did this team come up with?

(MOWOD) Our first step was to see if Mr. Bowles, our animal nutritionist, could develop a highly palatable poultry food that was not only tasty but fully filling as well. It took a while, but, viola!  He did just that.  Clinical studies have shown that turkeys empty  M.T. Bowles’s bowls every time one’s put in front of them.

(ED) Seems like an odd direction to take to solve our wild turkey problem, but go on.

(MOWOD) Of course, we didn’t want to spread Mr. Bowles’s  turkey feed willy-nilly all over the campus where other birds and animals could get at it, so we had Abel— our can-do-anything  guy— put together a unique dispenser that would be placed below the trees in the “south forty,” you know, where the turkeys spend the night. Take a look, here’s a rendering of Abel’s feeding device.

(ED) Hmm, it looks like a very large office water cooler only with a trough at the bottom where, I guess, the turkeys can get at the food. But what’s to keep, the other birds and small animals around here from inviting themselves to chow down out of the same trough at our expense?

(MOWOD) Ah! That’s where the combined geniuses of our sound engineer, Les Noyes and our dispenser guy, Abel, come in. Get this: They fashioned this feeder so that it metes out a carefully measured single-serving portion of food only when it is triggered by the sound of a gobble. It’s voice activated. A mourning dove’s coo, a crow’s caw, a squirrel’s squeak will not budge the device—only the gobble sound of a turkey will do it.

(ED) This is getting weird.  So, we’ve got a highly palatable, turkey breakfast food that’s dispensed out of a water cooler sitting in our park that only turkeys can access.  How in the world does this solve our wild turkey proliferation problem?

(MOWOD) Patience, patience.  Enter our pharmaceutical chemist, Tess Toob. While her three compatriots were working out the dispensing of this highly palatable poultry food, in her lab, Ms. Toob was tasked with developing an ECP in a dosage suitable for turkeys.

(ED) Hold it, hold it.  ECP?  What the heck’s an ECP?

(MOWOD)   ECP stands for “emergency contraception pill.”

(ED) What?

(MOWOD) You know—the morning-after pill.

(ED) Holy feathers, I think your group may have gone off the rails.

(MOWOD) Stay with me—it all comes together.  The medication, of course, is granulated into the poultry food.  They get a dose of their ECP each morning out of the dispenser no matter what was going on the night before.  Hey, we’re talking Fruit Loops for turkeys here. They gobble it up. And get this: it’s so rich in nutrients and flavor, they’re not hungry until the next morning.  This plan is turkey-friendly. No more roaming Manor streets, sidewalks and our lawns all day trying to scratch out a decent meal and— I might add— leaving their bothersome untidiness behind on our streets and sidewalks. It’s all very simple—no more litters; no more litter.

(ED) That would be a blessing.

(MOWOD)  Exactly. This is great news for Manorites as well as Manor turkeydom.  After breakfast, they can snooze and roost all day under the shade of their bedroom trees living out their lives in blissful lollygagging without having to find food to eat or having little ones to fret about.  And, yes, a couple of seasons down the road as nature’s attrition rate unfolds, our “turkey proliferation problem” has quietly and humanely solved itself.  This plan, you might say, is— deceptively simple, but exquisitely perfect.

(ED) By golly, I think you and your team of brainiacs may have come up with a solution to our turkey peril.

(MOWOD) We take pride in our job here at the work-order desk, Mr. Director.

(ED)  As well you should. But, hold it. You got me thinking—that group of yours, I wonder if they could solve this other problem we’re having?

(MOWOD) Mr. Director, I must remind you that before we can initiate any action, we require a completed work order form, or a detailed message recorded on our phone line.

(ED) Oh sure, sure (picking up his phone) what’s that number?

(WOMOD) #7231.

(ED) Let’see, 7-2-3-1. Hello, this is the Executive Director I’d like to open a work order.  We need help, big time. Please ask Bowles, Toob, Craftsman, and Noyes to meet with me in my office tomorrow at nine A.M.  You can tell them we’ll be talking about staffing.

—A. Looney