Total Turtle Tea Trolley

The Total Turtle Tea Trolley is on its way to the metmow’s stables, where lives, among others, the equine novelist Joyce Carol Oats. She is incredibly prolific, and writes under several pseudonyms so as not to flood the metmow with her books. Joyce never stops thinking about writing — in fact, she can barely be induced to stop, although she does have duties as the head of the Program in Fiction at Nelliphant University. She is aided in her productivity by a device that Piney Salzman built for her at the beginning of her writing career. It is a Horse Typewriter, on whose keys she can gallop as fast as she can. Through a series of gears and pantographs, her one horsepower of typing force is translated into the workings of a small Remington typewriter, which produces a normal 8½ x 11 typed page of paper. The only difficulty which Piney had difficulty overcoming was how to allow Joyce to press the carriage return at the end of every line, and until a second version of the device can be constructed, the carriage return is pressed by Aloysius, a black-and-white Shetland sheepdog. Aloysius is also responsible for loading and unloading each sheet of paper, and for stacking and collating the manuscript. Aloysius reads the manuscript as it is unfolding, and sometimes will offer suggestions. But Joyce’s usual rejoinder is, “First Thought, Best Thought!” Only once in her career has she done a second draft. “Did Dickens do second drafts? Heck, no! He just let it all hang and let his readers do the sorting out.” Despite such intemperate comments, she is actually quite solicitous of her readers, and none of them has dared to point out to her that her books sometimes contain material that is not quite suitable for delicate metmow sensibilities.

Her current book, “Neversink Mountain,” is about a young bear who wanders into a small town in the Catskills one fall to set up a coffee and pastry stand in the outskirts, just off the main road. Alone at first, save for his muffled greetings to the balloonists who, every night at midnight, drop off the beans from Colombia for the next day, he has difficulty making his way. People don’t want to buy bear claws from a bear. But he is persistent, and, in the winter, the snowplow crews are desperate for hot coffee, even more so when they discover that it’s better than the ditchwater that comes out of the percolator at Irv’s Diner on County Road 55. The bear gains a friend in Smitty, the worn-down, alcoholic leader of the snowplow crew/volunteer fire department, who lets him stay in his woodshed and tries to impart wisdom, which, when you get down to it, isn’t wise at all. The bear tries to keep Smitty on the straight and narrow, even though he has a hard task, given the 275-gallon oil tank full of Jim Beam which Smitty has buried in his back yard. But they have a greater challenge in front of them. The State of New York wants to seize the town and another neighboring hamlet by eminent domain and sink them to the bottom of a gigantic reservoir. The bear tries to do his part, by catering the innumerable, desperate town meetings with coffee and pastries. The townspeople finally discover how delicious the coffee and pastries actually are, and offer the bear a crumb or two of acceptance. But it is practically too late. What can two tiny towns do against the mighty New York State Department of Environmental Protection? The bear has an idea. Over the summer, he had operated the snack cart at the White Beagle Golf Course up in Banana Lake, where the prosperous golfers from New York City came to play. Insofar as he could tell, there had been many retired lawyers among their number. If some of them could be induced to help, it could at least buy the towns some time. Using Smitty’s phone, the bear calls the golf pro at White Beagle, and soon a crack team of septuagenarian attorneys has sent in its dues and active status reinstatement requests to the New York State Bar Association. Paperwork begins to fly, and instead of proceeding directly to drowning the towns, the State decides to hold a series of public hearings. Once again, the bear provides coffee and pastries. But the State has stacked the hearings, busing in thousands of people to pack the seats and tell the commissioners how wonderful the new sources of water and power will be. The townspeople are forced to listen on loudspeakers outside the building. As the hearings drag on, and hope fades, a despairing Smitty drinks more and more. At the midpoint of the final hearing, he staggers off and reappears driving his snowplow, with which he hopes to cave in the building where the hearing is taking place, and bury the commissioners and all the false witnesses beneath the rubble like Samson smiting the Philistines in the Temple of Dagon. Unfortunately, his aim is poor, and he only succeeds in embedding the blade of his snowplow into a Ford Expedition. Smitty is fired, and obliged to check into the dual diagnosis program at the Catskill Regional Medical Center. The bear goes with him, and provides the morning group therapy meetings with coffee and pastries. As for the towns, they are history — evacuated in six months, underwater in a year. But you can still see the bear and Smitty on the streets of Monticello, or South Fallsburg, or even Ellenville, with a little cart with an umbrella, offering a morning’s sustenance to the passersby.

The Tea Trolley arrives at the stables, where they can hear the enormous racketing and pounding noises of the Horse Typewriter in action, punctuated by the tiny “ping” that signals the end of the line. The barking of Aloysius signals the great Appaloosa that the Trolley is here, and Joyce Carol Oats jumps off the apparatus. Today, the Chief Tea Turtle is wearing a slightly off-white top hat made out of papier mâché handbills advertising a line of mechanical typesetting implements, and is wearing a harvest gold upholstery fabric dust ruffle — quite warm, but of incomparable stiffness. The Under Tea Turtles are wearing boat-shaped light-blue paper hamburger fabrication hats and white buck dust ruffles. The Tea Treats for today include freshly-baked oat cakes, Winesap apple sections with lemon juice and a pinch of cinnamon, some new-mown hay, and roasted beets. There is also a large, marrow-filled magical beef bone for Aloysius. Today’s tea is chrysanthemum, in a Japanese white export-ware teapot with dark-blue images of pines, itself surrounded by a paper-white toile tea cozy.

Although numerous ideas are rumbling around in Joyce Carol Oats’s head, she is more than happy to see the Tea Trolley. Sedgwick, the littlest Tea Turtle, knows her work quite well from all the children’s stories she’s had published in his hornbooks and readers, and has brought one of these for her autograph. She has a special ink-pad for such contingencies, and she brings it out, stamps on it with her hoof, and then delicately presses it onto one of the blank pages at the beginning of the reader. She has a similar pad impregnated with a special alcohol mixture for cleaning, on which she wipes her hoof to get the ink off. Aloysius steps forward with a fountain pen to add an explanatory note: “(Joyce Carol Oats, signed this day ______)” Sedgwick waits for the page to dry, closes the book, and happily stores it away on a lower shelf of the Trolley. Joyce Carol Oats encourages him to keep a journal of his Trolley adventures, which may well prove useful in later life when an older turtle may think of writing an autobiography or even turn his hand to fiction. “Just think how lucky you are! Most turtles in the outside world would be fortunate if they got one line out of their lives: ‘I sat on a rock and ate plants.’ You get to see how everyone lives, and that is crucial.” Sedgwick blushes, for he has already spent a considerable amount of time in the pond outside of Tea Trolley Headquarters sitting on a rock and eating plants. But he also knows that he has gone to the farthest corners of the metmow, delivering tea and treats. Someday, he will write about it.

It is well before dusk as the Total Turtle Tea Trolley propels itself towards the home and atelier of Floradora the Kittycat. Floradora is called a “fiber artist,” but this is a euphemism. In fact, what she does better than anyone else is to tangle yarn, in ways so novel and various as to make her one of the chief aesthetic lights of the metmow.

Fortunately, the metmow is well set-up to provide her with materials. Herds of alpacas and guanacos live within fifteen minutes of her, and angora rabbits and cashmere goats are likewise conveniently situated. The alpacas take care of the processes of yarn manufacture, and are constantly adding new styles; their job only increases from year to year, because they never discontinue a yarn, but the task of producing the older yarns has in recent years been delegated to the guanacos. Sweet-tempered and gregarious, the alpacas are never too busy to answer knitting questions. Some preside over a vast warren of yarn, a series of twisty little passages, all alike, where only they know the location of the specific balls. It is likely that they lit on such a system in order to feel useful, because they love finding yarn for other creatures.

Floradora is the alpacas’ best customer, and they never know what she is going to pick. When she was very little, she came to the yarn warehouse to claw at balls of silk-angora mix, and as the rule was, “you claw them, you’re going home with them,” she quickly accumulated a large closet full of yarn. She liked nothing better than to lie on her back, with each paw clawing at a different bundle of yarn, and writhe around, knotting all the yarn together. As she grew older, she absorbed the skills of a lacemaker, for just as you only need four bobbins at a time to make lace, just so, you only need four paws to knot the yarn together. For a while, she made nothing but doilies, which were exquisite in their detail and precision, but eventually everything movable in her house had a doily under it, so, at her parents’ urging, she diversified into ruffs, napkins, and tablecloths. Although she was solitary by nature, she made such items for many young creatures’ trousseaus.

Everything changed when she went to Bunnyface University, and met her close friend, Amelia the Bunny. Amelia seemed very quiet on the surface, and appeared concerned only with nibbling the lawn on the quad, but she had a certainty about art granted to very few creatures, and she spent hours and hours trying to turn Floradora on to non-representational, non-utilitarian fiber art. She got Floradora to return to her first childhood experiences with tangling, tangling just for pleasure without worrying about the outcome. Then, she got Floradora to tangle in shapes that bore no resemblance to anything that could cover or adorn. Then, she got Floradora to abandon color, tangling only in black yarn or invisible fishing line. And, finally, she got Floradora to go through the motions of tangling, without actually tangling anything, but instead lying on a block of ice in the middle of the quad while Amelia played the Schnittke cadenza to the Beethoven Violin Concerto on an infinite tape loop. When the block melted, the art was over.

In her senior year at Bunnyface, she had her first exhibition, in the University Art Gallery, and it was there, at the opening reception, that she met her lifelong friends, the Chief Tea Turtle and Under Tea Turtles of the Total Turtle Tea Trolley. They were, of course, catering the event. All the Tea Turtles were wearing black berets, and, as dust ruffles, gossamer white Elizabethan ruffs extending half a foot out, which had been fabricated by Floradora herself. The Chief Tea Turtle was distinguished by a cloth d’or lining to his beret, and by glorious cuffs reproduced from Rembrandt’s portrait of Jan Six.  The Tea Treats for that day included fresh mackerel, white meat turkey, and liver-and-eggs, in addition to vanilla wafers, chocolate gaufrettes, and multicolored candy dots on parchment. The tea for that day was Samarkand, in a Vasarely-inspired teapot in the form of an oblate spheroid, surrounded by an ochre burnt velvet tea cozy. As the Chief Tea Turtle approached Floradora and Amelia, who were affectionately huddled against a plinth bearing a statue of Equanimity from the gallery’s permanent collection, Floradora inquired of the Chief Tea Turtle whether there was any mackerel. Two of the Under Tea Turtles leapt into action, presenting her with a freshly-cooked 1.5-pound mackerel on a silver salver. Amelia inquired slyly of the Chief Tea Turtle what he thought of Floradora’s tangles. The Chief Tea Turtle, being the fourth most well-informed creature in the metmow, knew of a certain manifesto that a certain bunny had attached to the door of the University’s Department of Fine Arts and Crafts with blue painter’s tape, setting out in blazing terms a theory of tangles and knots that would supersede any hitherto devised. As such, any answer he gave might well be seen as inconsistent with the theory, and although Amelia would never be unkind to anyone giving an uninformed answer, she might well be disappointed. The Chief Tea Turtle coughed, which is rare for a turtle. He said that at times like this, he would often refer to the works of Theodor W. Adorno, and then adopt the exact opposite idea. He suspected that Adorno would condemn Floradora’s tangles as mere folk art, a reflection of a naive agrarian model of society, and for this reason, the Chief Tea Turtle would venture the opinion that Floradora’s tangles were the best thing since the invention of the long-playing phonograph record. Floradora beamed; Amelia was confounded, as she had rather hoped that the Chief Tea Turtle would be nonplussed by such a quiet yet formidable bunny as herself. But in the next moment, the Chief Tea Turtle signaled to the Under Tea Turtles, who produced an item not on the day’s menu, to wit, a bouquet of carrots. With a flourish, the Chief Tea Turtle presented it to Amelia, and she knew at once that she had been Recognized.

The reception was just beginning, and soon Floradora and Amelia were engulfed in a welter of other creatures. The Tea Turtles served Tea and Treats to all, and it was acknowledged by all that Floradora’s tangles were, if not comprehensible, nonetheless delightful. One could hear murmured inquiries as to whether Floradora might be induced to do an afghan or two (in a conventional rectangular shape), and the possibility of macrame was also floated. Soon, there was a pile of exhibition programs with commissions scribbled on them that reached Floradora’s chest. Amelia’s ears were twitching, as she tried to think of a way to put her stamp upon these projects. She resolved to suggest to Floradora that she might make one of the afghans out of eight-strand telephone wire. But perhaps not yet.

The Total Turtle Tea Trolley is rushing along the sandy path connecting the home of the Little Baby Diu to that of the Rainocious Rhinoceros. But the Trolley is not heading for the R.R.’s house, but to the big flat rock with a tunnel leading to a hollow underneath — the home of the skunks. Having played such an admirable part in this year’s Memorial Day Picnic, Cyrus and Ludmilla Skunk have now returned to quotidian life, at least until the Fourth of July Picnic rolls around. Ludmilla has been taking care of her delightful children, Tommy and Roger, while Cyrus goes out each night to drag home mysteriously placed, completely cooked entrees.

Cyrus, being half a taco shy of a combination plate, has never wondered to himself about his good fortune, and simply assumes that creatures are very forgetful when it comes to leaving a foil tray of hot, bubbling lasagna on a park bench, or a fully stocked picnic basket, laden with submarine sandwiches and a half-gallon container of giardinera pickled vegetables, to one side of a bush. In truth, the source of the food which he prides himself on cleverly finding is a well-kept secret.

Once upon a time, the wicked Nola the Rhinoceros, the sister of the Rainocious Rhinoceros, lived in the metmow, and although she was truculent from the beginning, creatures returned good for bad, and made excuses for her. One of the curious things about her was her preoccupation with wealth — curious because, in the metmow, money simply doesn’t come up. (That is, unless you’re one of the rare creatures who needs to get things from the outside world, in which case, you rely on the financial wizards at Crustacean Express, a financial institution formed from the merger of LobsterBank and First Shrimp and Scallop.) Nola wanted, not just a coin collection, but a fully stocked cabinet of currency; because creatures wanted to make her happpy, she got just that. But one day, a bond went missing, and, as Nola obsessively counted her bonds daily, she knew right away: it was a $1,000 Series EE United States Savings Bond. She barreled outside, charging around, searching for it. She was about to charge through the side of a small thatched building in indignation, when Cyrus Skunk walked up with the bond in his paws, and asked her if she could read it for him. He was delighted to find that it was hers, but Nola herself was swooning at the return of her lost bond. Cyrus looked with perplexity as she kissed it with long, puckering smooches. She shook his paw. From that day, Nola cooked dinners for him, which she left out in hopes that he would find them. And, when she became truly wicked, and lit out for New York, the dinners mysteriously kept on coming, delivered by unseen hands.

But the skunks love teatime surprises, which never spoil their dinner, and the Tea Turtles are here for that very purpose. Today, the Chief Tea Turtle is wearing a lightweight pale blue Polartec fool’s cap with small, jingling bells at the peaks, and a glistening orange samite dust ruffle. The Under Tea Turtles are wearing paper hats made out of the 1950s-style bags from The Hat, and beige chenille dust ruffles. The Tea Treats for today are suitable not for tea but for skunks. There is a log of hot sopressata, so hot that it is practically half hot pepper and half meat. There is a big Alpino salami. And there is a bucket of bright green pepperoncini. (The Tea Turtles were curing their own pastrami for the skunks, but it is not quite ready.) Because of the skunkly nature of the meal, there is no tea, but instead there are big stoneware mugs (fashioned by H. Sandon Hippopotamus) filled with artisanal cream soda.
Tommy and Roger, the skunk offspring, are overjoyed by the Trolley’s visit. Before anyone can say a word, they begin gnawing on the sopressata, and, despite its blistering heat, pronounce it delicious. Ludmilla slips away to the pantry and comes back with a fresh, crusty loaf of Italian bread, pours a dish of green, snappy olive oil, and presents the Tea Turtles with thick slices for dipping. Cyrus is bashful, and waits for a while before cutting himself some of the Alpino.

Cyrus and Ludmilla are only slightly distracted from the proceedings by the question of what to do with Tommy and Roger. The two skunk kittens are determined not to be educated, despite the best efforts of the muskrat lady schoolteacher. Their pranks have become the stuff of legend, as when they completely buried their teacher’s desk and chair under numerous bushels of ripe, red tomatoes. No one can quite condemn them, because they take after Cyrus, who had a similar youth but is now the soul of meekness. But there must be some way to interest them in school. The Chief Tea Turtle has reasoned that they might like comic books, and that they would have to learn to read in order to enjoy them. If they could be persuaded to move from individual words such as “BANG!” “SPLAT!” and “POW!” to titles with significant dialogue and backstory, the muskrat lady’s work would be done for her. The difficulty is that comics from the external world – even “Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen” – might give the impressionable young skunks the wrong idea. So a comic will have to be written for them. This is beyond the scope of the Tea Trolley’s visit today, but, as the Trolley departs, everything eaten down to the last pickled pepper, the Chief Tea Turtle is revolving a plan in his mind.

It is a blusterous day in the metmow, but the Total Turtle Tea Trolley is braving the winds and drizzle to bring its tasty cargo to deserving creatures. The foxgloves by the side of the path are fearfully waving back and forth, and the limbs on the trees are rustling, but the Chief Tea Turtle is heedless of all danger, and urges the Trolley onward. “One day,” he says, “perhaps it will be a joy to remember all this.” Even though the Under Tea Turtles’ dust ruffles risk getting damp, they cannot help but believe him.

The Tea Trolley is on its way to visit some very brave creatures indeed: the Stompling Nelliphants, a tribe of extremely large, grey elephants whose care it is to protect the metmow from all ills. They are not alone in this, for the winged turtles known as the Urtleopts constantly patrol the metmow by air, defending its borders from ill-meaning eagles, but the Stompling Nelliphants have two peerless marks of valor: their red-brushed helmets, which give them a martial appearance, and their iron shoes, which assist them in stompling and crushing. Mind you, no metmow creature outside their number has ever seen anything being crushed except the occasional tub of grapes, but the Stompling Nelliphants are prepared. It is rumored that, long ago, they made a foray into the outside world to quell poverty, greed, and injustice, and that, for a time, there was a golden age. In those days, there was neither law nor force, neither threats nor punishment. No trees were cut down, and no ships sailed the wide waves. There were no armies, or spears, or swords. The Stompling Nelliphants stood guard, and patiently guided men on lives of peace. But then, the Stompling Nelliphants realized that they were out of toasted cheese sandwiches, returned to the metmow, and all was lost. The outside world went to hell and the devil — in short, it got so bad that the mighty pachyderms despaired of ever setting things right again. So, they stayed where they were, and toasted and ate their cheese sandwiches, and did their best to forget that they had ever left. But in recent years, they have been reminded of what is out there. The rise of Nola the Rhinoceros, wicked as she is, has made them realize that attention must be paid to the outside world once more.

The Total Turtle Tea Trolley, only slightly moistened and chilled, has arrived at the great stone building where the Stompling Nelliphants live, and the mighty oak doors have been rolled open. Several elephants, decked out in their shoes and helmets, are playing ping-pong, while others are investigating a number of hundred-pound bags of circus peanuts. A third group of elephants is studying a book of strategy and tactics; they plan a mock exercise with a group of bunny rabbits tomorrow.

Today, the Chief Tea Turtle is wearing an olive-green turtleneck sweater, with an attached knitted dust ruffle made out of hand-spun Uruguayan alpaca, and a tan microfiber rain hat. The Under Tea Turtles are wearing dull teal turtleneck sweaters, with dust-ruffles of waxed natural canvas, and reversible navy blue rain hats. The Tea Treats for today include Gruyere cheese sandwiches on sliced sourdough, which the elephants will toast in their customized toasting racks. As well, there are small cakes made with lemon peel and ricotta cheese and surrounded by circles of wild berries, big bunches of Concord grapes, and a large sack of individually chocolate-covered blister peanuts. The tea for today is Burmese laphet tea, served in a ten-gallon orange-glazed cylindrical teapot, which itself is covered in a red flowered neoprene jacket.

The Stompling Nelliphants are overjoyed to see the Tea Trolley. The head of the Stompling Nelliphants, Maureen the Perspicacious, draws the Chief Tea Turtle aside, though not before downing a cheese sandwich herself. Maureen and her colleagues monitor the outside world through their network of clams. Who would suspect a clam of listening in on a conversation at an Italian restaurant, hidden in a bed of spaghetti, or find a clam sitting politely in a potted palm? The clams report back to the Stompling Nelliphants through their nexus of operations, Clam Central. At any rate, word has it that there has been a mysterious shakeup in the Nola organization; heads, many heads, have rolled. The Chief Tea Turtle must alert the Rainocious Rhinoceros and Rebecca Lobster, who, in turn, must look out for their refugee from Nola, Fluffy the Crab. The Crab Safe, the hidden, hardened silo that the metmow is building to protect Fluffy from Nola, is not yet complete. The Chief Tea Turtle accepts his charge. Maureen assures him that the Stompling Nelliphants will do their part, and that the Urtleopts are launching a new cohort into the air every two hours to patrol the metmow’s mysterious borders. A flipper-trunk handshake takes place, and the two return to the other Stompling Nelliphants, who have cheerfully exhausted the food and drink. The Chief Tea Turtle refuses the kind offer of some of the Stompling Nelliphants to make the turtles cheese sandwiches of their own. The Trolley packs up and departs, but it is all the Chief Tea Turtle can do to lead the Trolley through the rain; he is lost in thought.

The Total Turtle Tea Trolley is crossing a plank bridge across a swift stream, in which orange and gold carp can be seen. Eileen Fishie, the golden carp, is going to the Council of Metmow Designers, of which she, along with Vera Wang-Doodle, Elna the Rhinoceros, Bertie and Squishy (not only architects, but the designing powerhouse of Bertino Scuisci), and Calvin Claw are charter members. Calvin Claw, a lobster rescued by the Seafood Liberation Front, is the newest designer, and everyone is amazed by him. If he holds his claw one way, it can cut like a scissors, and if he holds his claw another way, it can cut like a pinking shears. He uses no patterns. He just drapes the fabric on the dressmaker’s form for a given species, and cuts fearlessly, even when using the most expensive fabrics. All the designers rely on the Magic Train, which brings thousand of bolts of fabric into the metmow from Paris and Milan, from India, and from China. (The Chinese crepe de chine is excellent.) Some of the fabrics have intricate handwork done by eighty-year-old women with loupes in Paris apartments. Others are printed with a 32-color printing technique using a special machine in Germany. Still others are hand-dyed by teams of Chinese immigrants working in Italy. And, although some of them come from outside designers such as Versace, Chanel, and Prada, many others are designed by creatures in the metmow, such as the audacious Floradora the Kittycat, whose felted tangled yarn is excellent for making fall and winter coats.

Today, the Council is holding a summit on two subjects: what the fashionable colors will be for next year, and how to best outfit the creatures with the most varied clothing needs in the metmow, viz., the Tea Turtles and Violet Nelliphant. It is resolved that black will be the new black, and that orange will be the new orange. A Pantone ™ book is consulted, and Elna lobbies for a series of pastels, to which no one mounts a serious objection; the sea-foam green is a definite favorite. Bertie pipes up and merrily offers three shades of off-white as an adjunct to the palette; Squishy moves that these be reduced to two shades, a Colonial Antique White and a pale ecru. Squishy’s motion is seconded and accepted by acclamation. Squishy then points out that the Tea Turtles would be happy to provide enough bulk tea to dye anything one might wish a lovely shade of ecru, and a resolution is made to ask the Trolley for some bulk tea which they no longer care to use. Vera Wang-Doodle points out that bridal dresses might require more shades of white, and Squishy’s deleted shade is restored to the palette. Bertie has been outmaneuvered, but is soon mollified by means of a brownie taken out of a refrigerator holding foods for just such a purpose. With the question of colors settled, the large-wardrobe question is taken up. Elna the Rhinoceros speaks up, in her low yet squeaky voice, and reports that the fabric stockpile for this year amounts to 10,000 bolts. Not all of these can be used, as some have been made into items in previous years, but there are certainly enough for dust ruffles for the Tea Turtles and tutus for Violet, even if Violet were to change costumes four times a night. Her team of sixteen- and thirty-two-legged bird gentlemen, the “wootlebirds,” is sewing from sun-up to sun-down, and will soon have a complete set of outfits for everyone.

With this, the meeting would have been adjourned, were it not for a knock at the door, answered by Squishy. It is the Total Turtle Tea Trolley, whose ears are burning, but who are nonetheless here to cater the meeting. The designers note with interest that today, the Chief Tea Turtle is wearing a Biblical ephod dust ruffle in blue and purple and scarlet twined linen, and a high Priestly cap made of layers of silver and gold thread. The Under Tea Turtles are wearing white linen dust ruffle with a cobalt-blue Greek-key pattern around the edge and off-white Helen Kaminski woven rivergrass hats with blue bands. The Tea Treats for today include buttery palmiers, individual parfait glasses of rich chocolate pudding made with Valrhona chocolate and a tiny bit of magical Cointreau, a quinoa salad with pearl onions, mint, and shredded arugula, and cheese Danishes the size of dessert plates, unstinting in their use of cheese, with numerous slivered almonds across the top. In addition, they bring a shaker of fish food for Eileen Fishie, who has been patiently swimming around in a large fishbowl the entire time and who has indicated her votes and preferences by means of signal flags poked out the top aperture of the bowl.She is generally in charge of swimsuits and bathing ruffles. In any case, the tea for today is an earthy, double-fermented Chinese black tea in a Marianne Brandt Bauhaus teapot, all metal curves and spheres, which is itself contained in a dark brown velvet tea cozy.

The designers are happy to end their discussions and turn to the tea and treats. They are full of design ideas for their 2010-2011 lines, and are hard-put not to start sketching right away. They have been anticipated by the Tea Trolley, however, for in the special emergency rack under the Trolley are six large-format Moleskine sketchbooks and six Rotring mechanical pencils. Between bites, the designers furiously take notes and make sketches for their creations. Rather than hiding them, they all show them to each other, and the designers trade many ideas for improvement and elaboration. Even Eileen Fishie gets into the act when Elna holds up her notebook beside the fishbowl, and carefully draws Eileen’s idea for an Esther-Williams-inspired line of swimwear. Bertie and Squishy nod vigorously, and say that they will certainly be happy to rig up a swimming pool with all kinds of explosive synchronized water effects for the launch. In short, Eileen feels like a very happy fish indeed, and even goes so far as to have a teaspoon of pudding dipped into her tank.

The Tea Turtles discreetly pack up the Trolley and depart. But they cannot wait to see what the designers have in store for them, and have the feeling that, this year, they will be more decorative than ever before.

The Total Turtle Tea Trolley has recovered from its Memorial Day extravagances, and is whisking down the beach to the home of Rebecca Lobster, leader of the Seafood Liberation Front. Rebecca is indignant, as she sometimes can be. She has just received word that Julia Child has taped an episode in which she personally steams, boils, slices, and tears apart a number of unsuspecting and innocent lobsters. Particularly galling was Child’s treatment of Bertha the Behemoth Lobster, a sweet and inoffensive 25-pound lobster who could feed an entire banquet. Needless to say, there are no more behemoths, as they have been pushed over the brink of extinction. Not realizing that the episode was taped forty years ago, and that Julia Child herself has passed on, she fully intends to cancel her PBS subscription, and to encourage others to do the same.

The Chief Tea Turtle knows that Rebecca is only too aware of the evils in the outside world, and has been potentially prey to many of them herself. But, in his opinion, she needs to realize that she is in the metmow, and that the time when the rest of the world will be saved is still in the future. For now, she needs some tea, and the Under Tea Turtles make ready to deploy the tea and treats.

The Chief Tea Turtle is wearing a faux-alligator dust-ruffle — even though alligators are inimical to him, he is conservation-conscious — and, in keeping with the haute couture theme, the Under Tea Turtles are each wearing a John Galliano red velvet dust ruffle with gold crests emblazoned upon them. The Tea Treats today consist of pate a choux filled with a light chicken tarragon mousse, little cucumber sandwiches cut out in flower shapes, and a special dessert of mixed berry napoleons. The tea today is a special French mix of lapsang souchong with a little bit of cinnamon, and the teapot is a lovely glazed Limoges with roses, surrounded by a special pink velvet tea cozy.

While the tea is being served, the Chief Tea Turtle thinks about what he can do to help Rebecca achieve her aims peaceably. He has a whispered conversation with the other Tea Turtles, and they agree that they will take her to that great spiritual authority, the Owl Rabbi. Belonging as he does to a sect that believes that eating a lobster is as serious a sin as theft or murder, he may well be able to help her craft ethical arguments to persuade people in the outside world. With the proper menacing music composed by Paul Penguin channeling Bernard Herrmann, clips from the Julia Child show could be used to illustrate the butchery that goes on in the name of cuisine. Seashore seafood sanctuaries could be established, where shellfish of all kinds could roam free and be taken care of by people who cared about them. Families would come to visit them on the weekend, and college students could drop in after classes. If enough people could see crustaceans as people, and not submerged Happy Meals, dining might be impoverished but humanity might be richer. And if it could be done for shellfish, who is to say but that cows, pigs, and chickens might be next? It will take magicians working around the clock to conjure up enough magical meat to replace slaughtered fare, but, in the metmow, many improbable things have come to pass, and many more will in the future.

The Chief Tea Turtle does not share the entirety of his vision with Rebecca Lobster, but he and the other Tea Turtles shake her claw, and, leaving her with the remaining Napoleons, emerge onto the seashore. It is possible that the world can be changed. It is a secret known to few in the metmow, but he knows just how it will happen.

The Total Turtle Tea Trolley has Memorial Day off, as the Tea Turtles, like all other metmow creatures, were invited to the Memorial Day Picnic. The picnics of the metmow are held in an enormous clearing, the size of the Great Lawn in Central Park, where herds of elephants, auroras of polar bears, creches of penguins, and countless rabbits and hares can mix comfortably without anyone feeling crowded. There is a great stage, hung with bunting in the metmow’s colors of pink, white, and green, from which speeches are given and music played. This year, Ottorino and his Otter Grand Dixieland Band are providing the latter, and the otters look very snappy in their red-and-white-striped jackets and boater hats. Their instruments have rough patches and brazed bits, but their music is heartfelt. The instruments can be challenging, but, for example, two otters handle each trombone, one to blow and one to slide, and the tuba has several otters blowing into it at once while yet another works the keys.

The food at the summer picnics is splendid. The parents of the skunk kittens, Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus and Ludmilla Skunk, operate their own hot dog cart, filled with magically-created hot dogs, Polish sausages, and bratwursts. The skunks of the metmow enjoy the high life when it comes to food — it can never be too rich or too spicy. Cyrus Skunk leaves his home at nine o’clock every night with his little red wagon to search for food for his family. Every night, by pure coincidence, he finds an abandoned picnic basket full of Italian submarine sandwiches or a foil broiler pan filled with canneloni. He loads it on his wagon and drags it home. Ludmilla and the children eagerly await his return. They all fall on the food, leaping upon the canneloni without benefit of silverware, and reduce it to an empty pan. Their favorite dinner is beans-and-weenies — two cans of vegetarian beans, two packages of weenies, with a tablespoon of hot mustard and a tablespoon of barbecue sauce mixed in, with Tabasco to taste. Ludmilla makes it on the rare nights when Cyrus is too tired or ill to go out, and it inevitably restores him to health and vigor. It is rumored that this same dish won Cyrus’s heart back in the beginning, when a casserole containing it was left on his doorstep with a friendly note. Throughout their courtship, they went Dutch; she would cook one night, and he would drag something home the next night. Now, she is able to rest up and enjoy herself. But when it comes time for the picnics, she labors day and night on the relishes. There are three basic relishes: a green India pickle relish, a caramelized-onions-and-stewed-tomato relish, and a jalapeño/habanero relish, the latter much prized by other skunks and, surprisingly, lobsters. The cart itself is a work of Op-Art, with stylized flames along the sides that seem to leap out, and is topped by a sturdy umbrella in red, white, and gold segments; Cyrus Skunk spends weeks cleaning it and detailing it, and it has a sanitary gleam long missing from the skunks’ den.

There are other highlights, such as the skunk-run cheese stand, which offers a choice of Stilton, Roquefort, or Gorgonzola, but really the only culinary attraction which is truly on a par with the hot dog cart is the array of elephant-made pies. The elephants of the metmow have their own organization, the Nelliphant League, which is a group based on the charitable societies of the nineteenth century. It welcomes new creatures to the metmow, visits the sick, and promotes the baking of pies. Dr. Bartholomew Nelliphant is a charter member. The Chief Tea Turtle and Jerome, the fifth Tea Turtle, are ex officio members, and have applied the copious baking knowledge they have gained from the other members to the making of Tea Treats. (Some of this knowledge is inapplicable, such as the elephant trick of making infinitesimally thin puff pastry layers by, with the cleanest of feet, treading on the dough.) Every year, before each of the three summer picnics, the elephants confer as to who will make what recipe. Each elephant has her favorite recipe, and at times must be persuaded to relinquish it so that someone else can make it that particular year. As the pies are each four feet in diameter and as there are sixty to seventy pies at each picnic, everyone can have a slice, or two, or three, to his or her taste. All the elephants are determined that all creatures should taste at least one pie, and, if a creature tries to depart the picnic, she will find that an elephant has sidled alongside her, trunk grasping a pie plate, asking her if she has had any. This year, the most popular pie is the chocolate banana cream pie, presented by Ms. Elegant Nelliphant. The Tea Turtles, on the other hand, prefer the turtle pie, made for turtles and not of turtles, as they find caramel simply irresistible.

There are certain formal aspects of the picnics, although they are kept to a minimum. The Rainocious Rhinoceros must give his promised oration, which he and the Chief Tea Turtle were busy revising last night, and it is as finely tuned as the case against Verres, though much less irate. It expresses happiness for the occasion, a wish that all might enjoy themselves, and a small homily on the metmow way of life, this last being the tricky part. The homily expresses the belief that unbounded pleasure is yet not vice — that two hot dogs and a piece of pie do not make us gluttons, that we are not irresponsible for smelling the roses every time we pass a rosebush, and that a diet of zippy detective novels does not make us mental lightweights. There is no such thing as escapism, for we are already in the wonderful place where we are. The Rainocious Rhinoceros need have no fears about the oration. There is general applause for detective novels, louder applause for rosebushes, and wild cries of approbation for hot dogs (with a bow from Cyrus Skunk), and, because this is the actual order in which they were mentioned, there is no sense of anticlimax. The R.R. leaves the stage in fine spirits, to the tune of the Metmow Hymn, “Hail, Mighty B.”, as played by the otters.

The Chief Turtle and the Under Tea Turtles relax with their pie and mugs of decaf cofee with heavy cream and two tsp. of sugar. Sedgwick is having some milk, because he is not quite old enough for coffee. Overhead, the winged turtles known as the Urtleopts are demonstrating flying maneuvers; now, they are flying in two “V”s, wingtip to wingtip, and pull out and up into a beautiful starburst. Tomorrow, the Trolley will resume its service, but, today, the turtles are content.

The story of the Total Turtle Tea Trolley’s Memorial Day will be forthcoming.

For now, suffice it to say that there were many delights at the Memorial Day Picnic, and  Tea Turtles found it difficult to say no to any of them.  This is why they awoke yesterday, foreswore their morning and afternoon engagements, and resolved to drink black tea with lemon until such time as they returned to their senses. (Sedgwick, the littlest Tea Turtle, was found to have squirreled away a s’more, and he was enjoined not to eat it for at least another day.)

Yr. Obd’t Svt, the Chronicler of the Total Turtle Tea Trolley.

Tea time is approaching on this Friday afternoon, and the Tea Trolley is rolling along the red cobbled streets of Nelliphant Acres, a metmow community for elephants and their relations. The maple and sycamore trees above cast a floating shade, shimmering with brilliant corners of light through gaps in the canopy, and all seems at rest. School is out early, and small elephants can be seen in some of the front yards, tossing balls to each other, or playing hide and seek. It is almost impossible for an elephant, even a small one, to play hide-and-seek, given that elephants are so much larger than anything they might conceivably hide behind, but they use their imagination, and pretend that the trees and shrubs conceal more than they do. A few are playing jacks, which they collect with expert dips of their trunks, and, as they look up, they see the Tea Trolley. They cheer, and soon, all the children are waving their trunks at the Tea Trolley and its associated Tea Turtles. The Chief Tea Turtle has anticipated this, and orders the Under Tea Turtles to deploy the plate of chocolate cookies. Just as supermarket shopping carts have a special rack underneath which no one pays much attention to but which can actually hold sixteen bottles of soda, just so, the Trolley has a special Auxiliary Treat Rack underneath, which contains a similarly large quantity of Tea Treats to be distributed to deserving creatures to whom the Tea Trolley was not actually heading.

The Total Turtle Tea Trolley is, in fact, heading to the home and office of Dr. Bartholomew Nelliphant, MD, PhD, board-certified psychiatrist and a clinical professor at Nelliphant University Medical Center. For all his titles and degrees, he is known by all as “Bobo,” he is kind and modest, and he is always to be found, regardless of time or season, in a slouchy maroon lambswool cardigan sweater. He specializes in the treatment of small, nervous creatures, and wrote his doctoral thesis on the origins and development of the hoarding drive in squirrels (“Über den Ursprung und die Entwicklung des Sammlertriebs in Eichhörnchen“) . In his dark, wood-paneled office, with the curtains drawn, he listens with the utmost patience to the troubles of the creatures on his cranberry mohair velvet couch. Occasionally, he will make reference to a volume of Freud, whose German edition he has translated, completely and with great pains, into the elephant tongue. Twenty-four gold-edged volumes bound in morocco leather, on the shelf in back of his crewelwork easy chair, are testament to this decade-long pursuit, born out of frustration with the errors and infelicities of Strachey’s Standard Edition. Bobo is nothing if not solicitous of his patients. They know that they can call him at any hour of day or night, and he will ease their worries, but they are too worried of imposing on him, so, as a rule, they do not. His only vice, if it can be called that, is a slight vanity. He is awed by the beauty of his tusks, and keeps them polished at all times. Sometimes, between sessions, he gets out a bottle of tusk polishing compound and shines them up until, if he squints, he can see his mirror image reflected in them. And his patients know that, if he seems in any way out of sorts, a complimentary word about his tusks will perk him back up again.

It is also his responsibility to look after his wife, Violet, a chanteuse, or, as she says, “chantoosie,” with an unfortunate past which will have to be described at a later time. Suffice it to say that there was a time in her life when she was desperate for both affection and peanuts. She is desperate no longer.

But by now, the Total Turtle Tea Trolley has arrived at Bobo’s dark-shuttered white clapboard house with the little swinging shingle in front. Bobo has seen his last patient for the day, and is sitting in a lawn chair in the garden, where he is rapidly scribbling notes on a yellow ruled legal pad for his next book, “D.W. Winnicott for Dummies.” Violet, wearing a smidgen too much lavender eye makeup and a fetching indigo-and-white-striped apron, is sharpening his pencils. Both are pleased to see the Trolley rolling toward them across the lawn.

Today, the Chief Tea Turtle is wearing a tweed duckbill cap and a tan-and-red bargello dust ruffle, while the Under Tea Turtles are wearing puffy gray herringbone driving caps and red-and-blue rugby-striped jersey dust ruffles. The Tea Treats for today include a dozen 36″x24″ sheets of 3/4-inch-thick peanut brittle (cut by Piney Salzman at the table saw), freshly popped popcorn with fines herbes and sea salt (kept warm and fresh in a special insulated popcorn bag), mocha shortbread cookies, and some Stella D’Oro Breakfast Treats (suitable for any time of the day). Today’s tea is Buckingham Palace Garden Party, in a brown Bramptonware teapot surrounded by a grey piqué tea cozy.

Violet has sniffed out the peanut brittle from across the yard, and has dropped Bobo’s pencils to lope towards the Trolley. A word from Bobo restrains her, but she flutters her long, ropy eyelashes at the Tea Turtles, and, as Bobo sighs, the second and third Under Tea Turtles maneuver a slab out of the Trolley, put it on their backs, and serve her first. Despite any impatience, all can see her happiness as she devours the confection, and, as for her, she is so pleased that she does not even think of asking them for a second slice. In recompense, Violet serves tea, which she does with great restraint and delicacy. For her, tea is the first meal of the day, because she must be up quite late performing at the Milk Bar of the Hotel N. She does two sets, one at 8:00 and one at 10:00, with the Paul Penguin Trio, and her costumes are legendary — she has more tutus, in more colors, than the Tea Turtles have dust ruffles and hats put together, and she changes costume at least twice each evening. Bobo is always in the audience, listening appreciatively even to songs he has heard a thousand times before; to him, they’re always different when she sings them. Violet has numerous admirers, especially among the milk-drinking mice, who will come up to her after the performance for autographs and to give her boxes of bon-bons. Bobo is quite used to his wife receiving these tokens, which are wholly innocent, and a very large butler’s pantry in their home is devoted to storing them. Bobo’s only worry is that she will eat all of them, for she can become very hungry in the wee hours of the morning.

Violet’s low, rumbly voice, a sort of three-way cross between Paul Robeson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong, is perfect for interpreting the Great American Songbook, and a recording is planned for later this year. She asks Sedgwick, the youngest of the Tea Turtles, if he would be interested in playing on the recording. Sedgwick responds sadly that he does not know how to play an instrument, but Violet explains to him that he would be playing the chime, and that all he would have to do would be to pull a string at the appropriate place in the recording. If he is too nervous to pull the string during the session, they can record his chime first and overdub it onto the recording later. But, either way, she would like him to play the chime. Sedgwick is so excited he is ready to burst out of his shell, but he tries to remain calm, and says to Violet, “Here. Ha-ave a Breakfast Treat.” But all know what he means.

Bobo adjusts the top button on his cardigan sweater, which has popped loose due to a fraying buttonhole, and nonchalantly inquires of Sedgwick whether he has had any dreams, lately. Sedgwick replies that his two great dreams are to graduate from elementary school and to become a larger Tea Turtle. Bobo is somewhat disappointed, as he had been hoping to hear something about flying or going through tunnels, but stops short of saying that these are aspirations, rather than dreams. Instead, he tells Sedgwick that he hopes he will always have such good and peaceful dreams, pats him on the shell with his trunk, finishes his tea, and, as the Tea Turtles pack up, draws the Chief Tea Turtle aside for a word. But what that word was will have to remain for another Tea Trolley.

It is a quiet afternoon as the Total Turtle Tea Trolley makes its way through the forest, the Trolley’s wheels nearly silent on the carpet of soft leaves and fallen pine needles. Suddenly, from high in the treetops, something falls, hitting the ground near the Trolley with a “plouff!” The Chief Tea Turtle scurries out from the Trolley to investigates, and finds that it is one half of a cheese sandwich — extra sharp cheddar cheese on artisanal white bread — with a big bite taken out of it. From the outline of the bite, the sandwich can only belong to one creature: Zdenek Macaw.

The metmow is generally a place of peace and comity; however, there is a special exception for conductors. Zdenek Macaw is a conductor, specializing in Dvorak, but the popular psittacoid has found himself unable to coexist with the burgeoning Paul Penguin musical empire. Paul Penguin loves Beethoven and Mahler, often programming entire seasons around the two composers; Dvorak has been an afterthought. So, Zdenek Macaw has repaired to the forest, where his Symphony of the Air plays most of the other composers, but especially his beloved Czech. So besotten is he with Dvorak’s American period that, on one occasion, he asked the Arctic Tern to take him, in the blue and gold balloon, to make a pilgrimage to Spillvile, Iowa, where the composer spent the summer of 1893. He returned with numerous Czech delicacies from the tiny town, but said that the experience was much like handling a great man’s watch: thrilling, yet uninformative. Now, Macaw is planning to make his move in the 2010-2011 season, with a lineup of concerts that will draw people from Buffalino Hall, home of the Paul Penguin Symphony, to the forest, like protons in the thrall of some gigantic superconducting magnet. Robert and Susie, his equine friends, will scour the metmow disguised as giant warhorses — the Dvorak New World Symphony and the Brahms First, respectively — and give creatures tickets. There will be surprises, too, like Arnold Schoenberg’s orchestration of the Star Spangled Banner, and Jon Leifs’s “Hekla.” For the latter, Macaw will secretly but temporarily poach all the percussionists from the Paul Penguin Symphony, with the promise both of cream puffs and the thrill of making music with anvils and a small volcano. And at the winter solstice, his close friend Andrew Parrot will conduct an authentic performance of Mozart’s orchestration of Handel’s “Messiah.” Macaw’s woodwind section is salivating at the prospect. But Macaw will throw down the gauntlet with a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony — Paul Penguin’s signature piece. Macaw has been busy running the highlight reels of Furtwangler and von Karajan, studying their every move. He thinks he has what it takes.

The Chief Tea Turtle has managed to scoop the errant sandwich from the earth within five seconds of its fall, rendering it still fit to eat. The beautiful green-winged macaw swoops down to retrieve it, but is pleased to see the Tea Trolley. He has been so busy marking up the score for the Eroica over the past week that he has had nothing to eat but cheese sandwiches, and the possibility of some variety intrigues him. Just two minutes ago, he was eating his sandwich when he thought of a new way to signal an entrance in the first movement. As he experimentally waved his wings, he simultaneously let go of the sandwich and bit through it completely, causing its aforementioned precipitous fall. Now, he asks the Chief Tea Turtle what is on offer.

Today, the Chief Tea Turtle is dressed in a grey-blue broadcloth dust ruffle and a charcoal-grey tricorne from the Marianne Moore Fashion Collection. The Under Tea Turtles look very smart in grey pinstriped Ermenegildo Zegna business shorts and glossy six-segmented black waxed leather beanies. The Tea Treats for today include NO CHEESE SANDWICHES. NONE. NOT EVEN A TINY ONE. Rather, they include small slices of braised short rib with caramelized onions on individual rye toasts, a parsley-and-Israeli-couscous salad with chopped olives and tiny pieces of preserved lemon, slices of fairy cake, and Russian tea cakes, round like marbles, dusted in powdered sugar. The tea for today is Darjeeling, kept in a teapot in the shape of a cat but glazed with a Barnett Newman design of vertical red and purple stripes, itself enclosed in a batik tea cozy, yellow-green on either side.

Zdenek Macaw tries a little of everything, including a few more of the Russian tea cakes than he ought to have had. He feels well-fed for the first time in a good while. And he is filled with gratitude to the Total Turtle Tea Trolley. He can’t offer complimentary tickets, because all tickets in the metmow are free. So he flies back up to his nest and starts lowering something from a branch, to be caught by the Under Tea Turtles. It is a copy of Göran Schildt’s catalogue of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s home and industrial designs. And on page 156 is a full-color picture of the Alvar Aalto Tea Trolley. It is very different from the Tea Turtles’ model, which is designed to travel many miles around and about the metmow, over all kinds of terrain. Aalto’s trolley is designed to be pulled for a few feet inside the home. But its design is brilliant, and the Tea Turtles find it immediately appealing. Macaw says that he will write to Piney Salzman immediately, offering to supply the birch laminate and a measured drawing, if only Piney will make one for the Turtles. The Turtles are only too happy to accept, but the Chief Tea Turtle stops them from doing so. He says, “I have one thing that I truly want from you, Zdenek Macaw. I want you to allow me to make peace between you and Paul Penguin. In a year, Paul Penguin will be leading your Symphony of the Air in Dvorak, and you will be leading the Paul Penguin Symphony in Mahler. Everyone will be the better for it.” The macaw looks downcast, for he has truly been looking forward to giving Paul Penguin some agita with his surprise performance. The Chief Tea Turtle shakes his head. “We are not in New York, Zdenek. Not even New Jersey. Have another Russian tea cake and a little more tea, and this will come to a good end.” The macaw shrugs his wings sadly, but his spirits lift when he sees Jerome, the sixth Under Tea Turtle, reach under a shelf in the Trolley and bring out another plate of tea cakes. As resignation gives way to hope, he leaps on one of them, and begins to peck.