Attribution: Dario Taraborelli, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joined the keeper and Phyllis in trying to solve the mystery of the tapping and rapping just over their computer positions located near the balcony of their top floor Vista West apartment.
The rapping began early in the morning and consisted of a regular series of rapping interspersed with solitary tapping that led the keeper to conclude that a work crew was doing some repair work just overhead.
An inquiry to management put that conclusion to rest, as the tapping moved from just over Phyllis’s computer location to the keeper’s, and it went on and on until the inevitable occurred: Edgar Allen Poe entered the mystery and a raven’s voice said, “Nevermore!”
A quick check confirmed that the famous old–1845, poem “The Raven” was written about the lost love of “Lenore,” and tells of the poem’s narrator finally going mad as the raven repeats “Nevermore!”
Unfortunately, there are no ravens in Madison but there are their junior relatives–crows; and the keeper remembered once being told by maintenance guy Shawn that there was a problem with crows pecking at the roof air conditioner’s insulation.
It had been the precision of that tapping that had thrown off the keeper’s analysis, causing him to identify crows as organized workmen.
“Nevermore!” he told Lenore and Phyllis!
Comments