Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Card 3

Another Tuesday, time for some more puzzles! I've got sleeping cats around me, chicken in the slowcooker, and a card in front of me with a sailing ship on it, a mix of letters around the edge, a demon sky rat (seagull), a reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (water, water every where, but nary a drop to drink), and some mysterious brown and blue splotches (coffee? ink?), as well as a nautical looking compass. fun fun. Another evening of delving into Enigma Emporium's lovely puzzles. 

The back is a bright pink, with a semaphore motif, four stamps, some nautical flags, a long series of numbers that don't seem to go above 9, in groups of 4, and another message from Agatha. The message contains letters in "military speak" - A=alpha - phonetic alphabet, it reads: BIRCH LANE. I may have bowled over my puzzling companion to solve that before we got to the rest. 

The stamps are rabbit (6), crow (9), duck (12), sheep (5) = FILE - so far we're at "Look for file..." in a tennis court on Birch Lane? 

Next up is the Maritime Signal Flags. In groups of five, they read: 

• NWNNE 
• NSSSW
• EESNW
• WSENS

I'm going to go ahead and guess that these are related to the letters around the outside of the ship on the cover, and the order that we read them in. Reading in order: PASSWORD IS PALIMPSEST

We're feeling pretty good about ourselves, and we hop to the squiggly line that is probably semaphore. It is! I read the letters to my puzzling companion - I can't solve and note take simultaneously for visual puzzles it seems. Eric Kent. Who's he, I wonder? Does he live at Birch Lane? Does he have a file we need? 

The final puzzle here is the blocks of four. My companion has an idea. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is in quatrains. We try quatrain-line-word-letter: HUMAN RESOURCES. Hmmmm...

So, we are looking for a file, that may have something to do with Eric Kent, Birch Lane, and Human Resources. 

BUT! I am not done for the evening! A quick peek at the next cards gives me some more letters to play with for her FB profile. 

Our updated alphabet is now:

• Camel - 1 - A
• Sheep - 5 -E
• Rabbit - 6 - F
• Crow - 9 - I
• Bat - 11 - K
• Duck - 12 - L
• Chicken - 13 - M
• Cow - 14 - N
• Horse - 15 - O
• Pig - 18 - R
• Dog - 20 - T

Working off her 'coal from top to bottom' message, we have... dog, camel, dog, dog, duck, sheep, dog, camel, duck, sheep. TATTLETALE. Hmm. 

But really, that's enough for today now, and I can't just gobble this puzzle up - only 2 cards left, and only one set left beyond it. I want to spoil my dinner but we have other things to do this evening, and so we leave it there... for now.