Toll collectors of folklore / TUE 9-5-23 / Figures advised by consiglieres / Island group that straddles the International Date Line / Big name in applesauce / Barn hooter / Laser pointer or yarn ball maybe

Constructor: Alan Siegel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: SYMBIOTIC (62A: Mutually beneficial ... or a hint to three pairs of crossing answers in this puzzle) — three SYMBIOTIC pairs:

Theme answers:

• CLOWNFISH / ANEMONE (14A: Orange-and-white-striped swimmers that lure prey to 5-Downs / 5D: Stinging sea creature that offers protection to 14-Across)
• TICKBIRD / RHINO (28A: "Hitchhiker" whose warning cries help a 31-Down avoid poachers / 31D: Horned grazer that provides mite meals to a 28-Across)
• FRUIT BAT / FIG TREE (44A: Nocturnal flier that disperses seeds of a 40-Down / 40D: Ficus that produces sweets favored by a 44-Across)

Word of the Day: TICKBIRD (28A) —

: a bird (as the oxpecker or ani) that eats ticks infesting quadrupeds (merriam-webster.com) // The oxpeckers are two species of bird which make up the genus Buphagus, and family Buphagidae. The oxpeckers were formerly usually treated as a subfamily, Buphaginae, within the starling family, Sturnidae, but molecular phylogenetic studies have consistently shown that they form a separate lineage that is basal to the sister clades containing the Sturnidae and the Mimidae (mockingbirds, thrashers, and allies). Oxpeckers are endemic to the savanna of Sub-Saharan Africa. // Both the English and scientific names arise from their habit of perching on large mammals (both wild and domesticated) such as cattle, zebras, impalas, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, and giraffes, eating ticks, small insects, botfly larvae, and other parasites, as well as the animals' blood. The behaviour of oxpeckers towards large mammals was thought to be exclusively mutual, though recent research suggests the relationship can be parasitic in nature as well. // The swahili name for the red-billed oxpecker is Askari wa kifaru (the rhino's guard). (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, this is interesting, but I'm not that sure about the execution. Something both dull and forced about it. The "dull" part is the mere trivia of it all. I enjoy learning facts, but somehow just having animals crossing isn't that interesting (P.S. why hasn't "ANIMAL CROSSING" been a revealer yet? ... or maybe it has, in a different puzzle). Then there's the fact that one of these pairs doesn't involve animals crossing at all. Instead, we've got a bat crossing a tree. The SYMBIOTIC part is supposed to be the bat's dispersal of seeds, but ... that ... I mean, that doesn't seem that SYMBIOTIC to me. I'm sure in some Big Picture way it is, but literally every animal that eats seeds and poops in the woods (or wherever) does this. If you've ever stepped in unidentified animal feces in the woods (or your yard, as I did yesterday), then you know this: very seed-heavy. The animal pairings feel true to the spirit of the theme, but the bat/tree one feels ... well, as I said above, "forced." Plus, though I love bats, I am in no mood to see them so soon again after my recent bat infestation (an infestation of maybe one or two, but you just need one flying around your bedroom at 2am for it to *feel* like an infestation) (please, no lectures about rabies, I get my last shot tomorrow). 

TICKBIRD is slang I've never heard, and I don't really get using it here, given that the name of the specific bird found on RHINOs is the OXPECKER, and guess how many letters OXPECKER has? Yes, the same number as TICKBIRD. There is no universe in which OXPECKER doesn't beat TICKBIRD. There is no universe in which OXPECKER doesn't beat most things. Kindly add OXPECKER to your wordlists and disperse it liberally throughout all future grids, as a bat disperses fig seeds (though maybe less messily). Take TICKBIRD out, put OXPECKER in—you don't even have to change the grid, just move RHINO over one column (to cross the "R" in OXPECKER), and bam, there you are! It's true that OXPECKER is kind of an obscure word for a Tuesday, but then so was TICKBIRD—the only thing in the grid I'd never heard of. I looked it up and M-W basically shrugged at me: "I dunno, a bird that eats ticks?" OK, they were slightly more definitive than that, but only slightly. Also, no one seems to know how to write TICKBIRD; that is, if you google it, you can find it as one word, two words, or a hyphenated word, all in the first few hits. I have no feelings about this matter. I'll just point out that no one seems confused about how to write OXPECKER.

The problem with this puzzle wasn't so much the theme as the fill, which was something close to gruesome in places. My first wince went up at RICEU. (It's Rice, it's called Rice, everyone calls it Rice, please stop) (27D: Houston sch.). And then OHSO into ORECART across ECHECK made me rewince, and just when I started recovering from that, I slammed into the worst bit of all: "'A' IS" (!? ) (38A: "___ for apple") crossing "DO SAY" (!?!?) (32D: "Ooh, tell us everything!"). DO SAY? DO SAY!? I would happily accept "DO TELL," which is a real expression, an actual thing, a thing of the highest order. "DO SAY," however, you can feed to the fruit bats ... only don't, they'll just disperse it. Yeesh. I have a big "OOF" written in the margin there. The one good thing about that terrible crossing is that the puzzle itself appears to be crying out in pain: "I CAN'T!" See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. There has, in fact, been an ANIMAL CROSSING puzzle, and (bizarrely) it also has CLOWNFISH as an answer! Anyway, here it is (thanks to the constructor, Hanh Huynh, for pointing it out) 

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