The Moon Dial

For countless centuries or maybe longer, the North American Coddle-Popper has faithfully buried his treasure at the end of the Rainbow, as this has always been the ‘Holy Grail’ of hiding places.

The treasure is a gift of gratitude from the Coddle-Popper to Mother Earth as a thank you for being blessed with so much good health, unlimited amounts of fine friends and the luxury of always being able to go to sleep with the comfort of a tummy filled with copious amounts of fungal crunch bark clippings. No sir, no pesky tummy rumbles keeping them awake at night … and we all know how frustrating that is, yes sir, most frustrating indeed.

As time rolled by and the Earth continued to turn, tales were passed down from one generation to the next, during bedtime stories and too many fireside beers, the secret of the treasure at the end of the rainbow appears not to be a secret any longer. No Sir!

So much treasure has now been dug up by ‘too clever for their own good’ children, that the Coddle-Popper has now changed the hiding spot with this very ingenious ‘Moon Dial’ device at the new Rainbow’s End. Yes sir, very ingenious indeed.

It occurred one beautiful summer day in Williamsburg while everyone was busy with their usual busyness. It must have been later in the afternoon on a Thursday, because we had just had fungal crunch bark clippings and ‘sampled’ Thomas Tipsy Tippleman’s new flavour of Coddle Berry Wine, so we knew the evening would be one to remember.

Thomas Tipsy Tippleman always made a new flavour of Coddle Berry Wine on the first Monday of any and usually every month, he makes the concoction on a Monday but it takes him until the Thursday to return as he is usually too pickled from all the testing!

This day was slightly different because without warning and out of nowhere in particular a mystical wind wove through the woods at Once Upon A Time. (I know what you are thinking, but no, on this occasion you would be wrong, it had nothing to do with the sampling of the Coddle-berry wine or the fungal crunch bark clippings… allegedly).

The Great Bell was sounded and all the Coddle-Poppers returned to their Gathering Place to find a Mystical Dimensional waiting to

greet them. The Mystical Dimensional told the Coddle-Poppers many tales of his amazing adventures and his great scientific work in his studies of the ‘Humans’.

The Coddle-Poppers explained to the Mystical Dimensional about their own problems with humans and in particular the rainbows and their treasures.

The Mystical Dimensional explained that Humans believe that there are only ‘12 moon’ months in each year. Well, Fancy That! Where did they put the other one, do they think it is a spare in case one of the moons does not turn up for their shift?

Maybe humans drink Coddle Berry Wine too, in which case, it would be understandable.

Full of vigour and eager to create, the Coddle-Poppers ventured into the woods to find the perfect spot for their very own Moon Dial. With the Mystical Dimensional’s higher frequencies, knowing, Coddle-Popper imagination and a sprinkling of ‘Faery Magic’, the rocks could be lifted and moved with ease.

On the month that the Coddle-Popper was born, when the moon is at its fullest, the Coddle-Popper will sit patiently on the top of his ‘Birthday Rock’ and wait for the moon to cast a shadow from the tallest tree in the West towards the Southernly point of the hat, but only providing that the hat is seated perpendicular to the right eyebrow, and the wind is in a northwesterly direction. Yes sir, that is most important.

As soon as the two shadows touch, the Coddle-Popper takes the bearing of the shadow produced by the tallest tree and happily heads off into the woods with his shovel and treasure chest of goodies. Yes sir, Coddle-Poppers love nothing more than giving.

I have since found out that the distance travelled by the Coddle-Popper from the moon dial to bury his treasure chest is four bunny hops, three duck waddles, a frog’s leap and a whole cat’s purr.

Yes sir, the cat’s purr is very important, most important indeed, as long as it is a happy purr and not a ‘being tickled’ purr. No sir, they are completely different. And please never get distracted by the please feed me because I love you purr; I cannot be responsible for where you would end up following that one!

The Coddle-Poppers still won’t tell us which rock belongs to which month because they know that the children will be able to work out where the treasure is again, and seeing as there are thirteen new moons in every year and that the Coddle-Popper sits on a different rock each year they feel pretty darned sure that the ’too clever for their own good’ children won’t be digging up any more of their treasure from now on! No sir.

If only children weren’t so smart. We’d then know which rock belongs to which month!

…Or would we?