Clock Fairies

Fairies have been known to inhabit almost anything they take a fancy to, but old clocks seem to hold a special fascination for them, as do grandfather clocks.  I’ve heard from other people that they’ll even mess with alarm clocks that have a bell in them.  Bells and fairies….long story there.

My own mantel clock that I inherited from my grandmother is a beautiful old thing that hasn’t worked since 1963.  Apparently, the Fairies don’t care about that. They take particular interest in the glass door that covers the face.   The old hands on the face are very delicate and I don’t want to have to dust them often, so before I go to bed I make sure the door is firmly closed.  And, like clockwork (hmm), that door is wide open when I get up the next morning.  I think they swing on it, and push each other on it like a rope swing, laughing hysterically. They fall off a lot and drop five feet to the floor, but that seems to be part of the fun. 

There is a one inch clearance under the clock, that, when I move the clock to clean, is strewn with and odd assortment of fairy droppings.  An empty aluminum tealight cup, some hot pink bookmark tags (by Post-Its, of course) a finch feather from my aviary outside, a popsicle stick with runes scribbled on it, the cap off an acorn (we live in an old oak grove) which has been filled with sand. I recognize that sand.  It’s from the special sand box in my studio where I make the fairy cottages.  They play in it all the time, throwing it on the floor, hiding my tools in it, or leaving me gifts in it.  (I recently found 9 tiny brass bells buried in the sand, so they went on the cottage I was building at the time, called PineSong.)  I’m not quite sure what to do with the droppings.  Leave them?  Throw them away?  Relocate them to the fairy altar?  What do you think?

If you’ve found any fairy droppings, please tell me about them.