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from there,” Ainsworth said. “His neck is so stretched out, looks like it might snap. Poor, poor Gus.” Ainsworth’s eyes narrowed at Dale. “Terrible way for any man to die. Or bird.”
    “Why did Judy name Gobbling Gus after her dead husband anyway?” Truax asked.
    “She thought the bird was her husband reincarnate,” Aimsworth said.
    “Was he?”
    “Only Gus knows the answer to that.”
    “Which Gus?” Truax asked.
    “Both I guess.”
* * *
    Six years ago, Dale had walked out his front door on his way to work and seen something strange on Judy Stitch’s roof. Impossibly, before his very eyes stood a bizarre, multicolored creature, a mythic monster, blinking stupidly in the early morning sun.
    Dale had been terrified. The only turkeys he’d ever seen were the frozen, bald, headless ones in supermarkets. The pompous, majestic thing he saw on the roof looked absolutely nothing like them.
    “Lord almighty!” he cried. “It’s an alien!”
    The creature had strutted proudly around the roof, as if it owned the damn place. It must have some sort of weapon , thought Dale. There’s no way a creature that small and that ugly would act so cocky without a laser bazooka in his pocket.
    Dale slid behind the bushes alongside his house and got into position to spy on the alien. He watched as it coolly surveyed the neighborhood. It didn’t even care if anyone saw it. What balls this thing had.
    Dale looked around to see if he could spot the creature’s spaceship, but it wasn’t anywhere within sight. Perhaps it was cloaked. Or maybe the bastard beamed himself down to Earth from the mothership. In that case, it must be the advance scout alien, gathering preliminary data before an all-out attack. Sweet Joseph of Arimathea , thought Dale, that must mean there are hundreds of thousands of these things up there . Polishing their laser bazookas and waiting for his report.
    “Not on my watch,” Dale muttered, pulling out his cell phone to dial Andie.
    “Hello?”
    “Andie, it’s me. Are you sitting down?”
    “No.”
    “You should sit down.”
    “Why? Are we playing musical chairs?”
    “I have something shocking to tell you.”
    “Lay it on me,” Andie said.
    “Are you sitting?”
    “I’m squatting.”
    “Squatting? Like an Indian?”
    “Or a cowboy, yes.”
    “Fine. We have a dire situation out here.”
    “What is it? Did you forget your lunch again?”
    “Yes, but that’s the less dire of the situations we have. I need you to peek out the window very stealthily, look up at Judy’s roof, and give me visual confirmation of an alien sighting.”
    Dial tone.
    “Goddammit, Andie.”
    As Dale furiously redialed, Judy Stitch had wandered out her front door for the morning paper. Dressed in her bathrobe and slurping coffee out of a mug shaped like the severed head of Daffy Duck, she too blinked in the morning sun. Dale tried to squat down so Judy didn’t see him, but he was too late. She was already waving wildly.
    “Morning, Dale!”
    Dale made series of elaborate shushing gestures, then pointed ostentatiously to the roof and drew his finger across his neck.
    “Watcha doin’ in the bushes, Dale?”
    Dale tried to use some highly advanced, and completely made-up, mime techniques to convey to Judy that she should turn around and run like hell back into her house because a dangerous alien scout had beamed downed from outer space, was standing on her roof, and could vaporize the both of them with its laser bazooka and/or photon grenades.
    Judy watched Dale curiously, obviously wondering why her neighbor was putting on a Japanese Kabuki play in the bushes.
    She pinched her arm. “Am I still asleep? This is the strangest dream ever.”
    Dale gave up and whispered, “Judy, for the love of God go back inside.”
    “What?”
    “There’s an alien on your roof!”
    “Dale, I can’t hear you.”
    “An alien!”
    “Allen who?”
    “An Al-i-en!”
    “Aliens? Gah!”
    Judy spun around and raised her