Contains scenes of aerial larceny, private hunting interrupted, and local witnesses disagreeing so industriously that even the pine needles may wish to file corrections with the East Bellmont office before Tuesday’s edition closes.
Correspondence from East Bellmont
Squibs from our Inexhaustible and Talented Scribe
It is not often that a man looking upward into a pine tree discovers a new article of wickedness in the Lord’s common air, yet such was the report carried this week from the neighborhood of the dark pines beyond Brainardsville, where Zenda Crane declares she saw a hawk come in low and noiseless, like a thought a body ought not to have, and take a squirrel with such private skill that the woods themselves seemed ashamed to mention it. The hawk rose to a high limb and began its supper there, keeping its wings hunched and its yellow feet busy, when out of a clear and empty sky came three great black vultures, one after another, as if dropped from a crack in the blue. Zenda says they made no proper circle, nor any decent inquiry, but rushed the pine with a rudeness more like men at an auction than birds of carrion, and the hawk, being of a proud but practical family, screamed, struck once, and yielded the branch. Mordecai Vilecreek, who was also present, denies near half of this, except the parts which make him look attentive. He says there were four vultures, not three, and that the hawk did not yield, but was “put out by committee,” and that the squirrel, when last seen, was being disputed in three languages, none of them Christian.
The learned term, as brought from some book or other by a person who has had schooling enough to spoil a plain fright, is kleptoparasitism, meaning the robbing of one hunter’s dinner by another. But Zenda Crane says the word is too small for the business, and Mordecai, with his hat pulled down and his face the color of last year’s ashes, says the old people called such robbers the Kleptoparati, and would not point at them unless their thumb was in their mitten. According to his account, the Kleptoparati are not vultures exactly, nor hawks either, but a roving poor-law of the upper air, appointed to collect whatever has been killed too neatly, eaten too privately, or enjoyed without witnesses. They come where fresh blood is warm and ownership is uncertain. They do not hunt. They audit.
Here the testimonies part like two roads round a swamp. Zenda maintains that all was natural, though uncommon, and that the vultures, smelling new meat, merely bullied the hawk from its lawful gain. She heard wing-beats, a hard clatter of branches, and one cry from the hawk, sharp enough to split a pin. Mordecai says there was no smell to be had in that wind, and no wing-beat either, until the creatures were already there. He says the pine bent inward, not down; that the squirrel hung a moment in the hawk’s claws with its tail stiff as a watch-hand; and that one vulture spoke first, very low, saying, “Share.” Zenda says Mordecai heard a blue jay and made a sermon of it. Mordecai says Zenda was looking at the wrong tree.
The ruckus, by both accounts, was considerable. Needles fell. Bark flew. The hawk beat its wings with the affronted dignity of a deacon turned from his own pew. The black birds hopped and lurched and opened themselves wide, so that daylight showed between their feathers like windows in a burned house. Then all at once they lifted—the hawk, the vultures, the gray remnant of the squirrel, and perhaps one thing more, which Zenda will not certify and Mordecai will not cease describing. He says it was a fifth shape, no bigger than a hat at first, folded flat against the pine trunk, waiting until the quarrel was loud enough to hide its departure. Zenda says there was no fifth shape. Mordecai says that is how the fifth shape prospers.
Since that hour there has been a sober feeling under the pines. The hens keep close to the shed. A red squirrel scolded from the stone wall yesterday and then stopped in the middle, as though advised by counsel. Old tracks in the snow near Vilecreek’s sugar arch show three-toed marks going round and round a place where nothing lay. Zenda Crane has laughed at the whole matter twice, but not after sundown. Mordecai has set a tin plate upside down on his woodpile, saying the Kleptoparati dislike to see themselves multiplied in poor metal. This may be sense, or it may be Vilecreek.
We give the account as received, with allowance for excitement, distance, pine boughs, and the natural enlargement of facts passing through human witnesses. Still, there is instruction in it. Let no creature, man or bird, suppose his supper wholly his own while there are dark wings above the county and three neighbors near enough to testify. For there are thieves that steal meat, thieves that steal credit, and thieves that steal the shape of the story itself; and of these last the Kleptoparati are said to be the oldest, arriving from nowhere, making a ruckus, and leaving every honest witness poorer by one certainty.
BELZORAM
#AdirondackGothic
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#ChateaugayLakeLegends
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Brainardsville Kleptoparati Come for Supper
[Verse 1]
Under Brainardsville pines where the daylight thins,
Zenda saw a hawk come gliding in,
Quiet as a sin nobody dared to name,
Snatched up a squirrel like a private claim.
Up to a limb with his yellow feet,
Thinking, “Now I’ve earned my meat,”
But the blue sky cracked like a courthouse door—
Three black coats came looking for more.
[Pre-Chorus]
No circle, no manners, no “How do you do?”
Just wings like warrants and a hunger that flew.
Mordecai said, “Four!” Zenda said, “Three!”
Both agreed it weren’t fit to see.
[Chorus]
Klepto, klepto, Kleptoparati,
They don’t hunt, they audit the party.
Dark wings dropping where the blood runs warm,
Steal your supper and revise your form.
Klepto, klepto, count your claws,
They’ll rob your dinner and rewrite the laws.
You may own the branch, you may own the tree,
But you don’t own much when the black wings see.
[Verse 2]
Book-learned folks call it kleptoparasite,
A fancy little word for a woodland fright.
Zenda said, “Too small for such disgrace,”
Mordecai went ash-colored in the face.
He said, “Old folks knew ’em, thumb in mitten,
Never pointed direct, lest a man get bitten.
They ain’t hawks, ain’t vultures quite—
They’re poor-law judges of appetite.”
They come when the eating is overly neat,
When a body enjoys what he had to beat.
They don’t bring teeth, they don’t bring shot—
They collect what they reckon ought not be got.
[Chorus]
Klepto, klepto, Kleptoparati,
They don’t hunt, they audit the party.
Dark wings dropping where the blood runs warm,
Steal your supper and revise your form.
Klepto, klepto, mind your plate,
They’ll arrive too early and leave too late.
You may bless the meat, you may lock the door,
But they’ll take the story and come back for more.
[Bridge]
Zenda heard branches, a hawk’s sharp cry,
Mordecai heard one whisper, “Share,” from the sky.
She said, “Blue jay.” He said, “Wrong tree.”
Then the pine bent inward mysteriously.
Needles fell, bark flew loose,
Like a deacon shoved from his proper pew.
Daylight showed through the feathers spread,
Like burned-out windows over the dead.
And maybe there was one shape more,
Flat to the trunk like a nailed-up door.
Zenda won’t swear and Mord won’t quit—
“That’s how the fifth one prospers,” says it.
[Final Chorus]
Klepto, klepto, Kleptoparati,
They don’t hunt, they audit the party.
Dark wings dropping where the blood runs warm,
Steal your supper and revise your form.
Klepto, klepto, don’t testify,
They’ll steal the meat, then borrow the sky.
Thieves take credit, thieves take bread,
But these take the tale right out of your head.
[Outro]
So tip your tin plate on the pile, my friend,
Keep hens in close when the pine tops bend.
If your supper seems yours, don’t be too hearty—
There’s always room for the Kleptoparati.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?