Which Way, Wind?

Weathercocks. What are they?

That is the question I found myself pondering this morning while sipping my third cup of dark roast—purchased, I might add, at an exorbitant markup from the new café on Main Street, which the K Fund most certainly did not subsidize despite what certain busybodies on the county council have implied. The coffee was adequate. The weathercock atop the café, however, was extraordinary.

It was pointing north. Or possibly south. The point is, it was pointing somewhere, and my moustache tingled the moment I noticed it, which means something. It always means something. You would think, after seventeen suspicious deaths in Pickax over the past four years—a town of three thousand souls, mind you, though no one seems to find this remarkable—that people would pay more attention to where the wind blows. But do they? No. They do not.

Koko, of course, noticed the weathercock immediately. He sat on the windowsill of the apple barn and stared at it for forty-five minutes without blinking. This is significant. Yum Yum, meanwhile, knocked a pencil off my desk, which I interpret as a coded message about directional symbolism. These cats are extraordinary. Are they smarter than most residents of Moose County? One hesitates to say so in print.

I should note that someone attempted to steal the weathercock from the Goodwinter farmstead last Tuesday. There was also an unrelated barn fire. These events are surely coincidental and have nothing to do with my having visited the property that afternoon to photograph architectural details for a column I never wrote. My moustache had been tingling all day. What does that tell you?

The K Fund has allocated a modest sum for weathercock preservation, which my accountant assures me is entirely tax-deductible under the cultural heritage provision. Is it generous? Obscenely so. You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, the squirrels have been at the birdseed again. I have spent fourteen dollars this month on sunflower seeds alone—fourteen dollars!—and these rodents consume it with an entitlement that borders on criminal. Could they be connected to the weathercock theft? Koko seems to think so. He sneezed twice while facing the window, which in my experience constitutes probable cause.

But I digress. Why do we mount metal roosters on our rooftops? What purpose do they serve in an age of digital forecasting? These are questions worth asking, and I have asked them, which is more than anyone else in this county has bothered to do.

Weathercocks.