Today as I sat eating delicious pieces of a former bovine dressed with mayonnaise, lettuce, and what I hope were salmonella free tomatoes, I observed these curious birds scurrying about. These odd little things were pecking at the ground, flittering about like an ADD ten year old on a three day cocaine binge. I noticed one of the fellows in particular kept pecking at the ground and then flying up in the tree that was shading my car. The rest of the clan seemed to be pulling up worms and enjoying a meal- something akin to what I was doing at the time. For the better part of an hour I sat there listening to my favorite talk radio station engorging myself on charred animal remains. The whole time I was there these birds continued in the same fashion- pecking, eating, flying, pecking some more, scurrying about. After finishing my rather tasty meal, I exited my car and looked in the tree shading my car. There sat that one odd creature fiddling around with a nest. The little rascal had some piece of grass or weed in its beak and was pushing it into the side of the nest as if the world would stop if he were unsuccessful.
As I returned to my gas-guzzler and left, I wondered what government program this bird had been through to be such a fine engineer. Was he a product of the Public Avian Education System or did his parents privately educate him? Did he attend Harvard University for the Birds? Was he an apprentice engineer and then ventured out on his own? Was he a Bird School Dropout that used a government sponsored engineering program to become educated? Was he an engineer at all? Maybe his home had been destroyed in a storm and the Bird Council lent him a mobile nest. Maybe the Council built the nest for him and he was just doing some extra decorating.
I began contemplating the plights of all his bird friends that I had seen there also. They obviously were working? But why? Was there no bird stamp program? Or were they the unlucky ones that had to work to pay their bird taxes to provide the bird stamp program? Did they live in HUD Nests? Were their nest rents subsidized by the Bird Council? Would they be able to go to college? Would they qualify for scholarships or inbirdships? Had some of the birds gotten knocked up while they were still in bird school and delivered out of birdlock birds?
What I really wanted to know was- whom or what was taking care of these birds? Surely there was a bird government that insured that all birds had the same number of worms to eat- that all nests were similarly constructed in size, shape, and accoutrements- that all the birds had free bird health care- that female birds had the right to abort their baby birdies- surely a government “of the birds, by the birds, and for the birds.”
In a bit of literary irony, before pulling into my driveway, I hit a bird. I wonder who pays for the funeral and burial?
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