Road Apples by Tim Sanders
July 1, 2012

Birdbrains



I had planned to write this week’s column in honor of our nation’s birthday, and had hoped to include several grand pronouncements about those great historical documents which afforded our citizens liberties unknown to those living under European despots. But then the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its health care ruling, and I decided the timing was all wrong. I knew I’d probably say something I’d regret later, and have to print a retraction and pay a large federal fine.

So instead I will write about a related topic–birds. We have a whole lot of them. Not in the house, but outside, in close proximity to the house. I’ve had enough experience with birds over the years to convince me that, despite the many beautiful melodies some can produce, and despite the fact that several varieties are delicious when prepared properly, when it comes to intelligence, birds rank just below sea monkeys and only slightly higher than FOX News anchor Shepard Smith on the IQ scale.

Here’s a short list of birdbrained birds I’ve encountered:


• OWL: The first bird I had any interaction with was an owl my dad brought home when I was three. He had it in a coffee can, and he explained that it had flown into his windshield on the way home from a church meeting one night. (Dad was on his way home from the church meeting, not the owl.) Flying into a windshield is not a bright thing to do, but if you think about it, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that you can be traveling down a long stretch of road, without another vehicle in sight, and at some point along the way a bird, any bird, capable of choosing any altitude at all, will decide to fly across the road right in front of your vehicle. Birds think that way, if you want to call it thinking.

• PIGEON: And speaking of birds crossing the road, when I was a few years older, my friend Bruce Douglas gave me a pigeon. He raised them, although I’m still not sure why. I named mine Walter, which I thought was hilarious, but nobody caught on. Walter was perfectly capable of flying, but for reasons known only to him he decided to walk across the street in front of our house, and was run over by a truck large enough to kill a full grown ostrich, let alone poor little Walter Pigeon. Not bright.

• PARAKEET: My mother had a parakeet which she named Skipper. She named all of her subsequent parakeets Skipper, too. She liked the name, and was very proud of his vocabulary, which consisted of “Pretty Boy.” He said it when he was happy, or sad, or mad, or half asleep. Once, on a trip to Florida, Dad pulled over to get gas in Georgia, and I accidentally left the door to Skipper’s cage and the car door open after he bit me. Skipper, that is. Skipper could have made his escape if he’d been bright enough, but he only flew to the top of a tree next to the gas station. I assumed the nasty little wretch, who’d bit me on the tongue with almost no provocation, would remain there, but Mom insisted that Dad retrieve him. I had never seen Dad climb a tree before, and I was impressed. When he got back to the car, he impressed me some more. My backside, at least.

• ROBIN: On our second date, Marilyn and I rode my motorcycle to a cider mill and had a snack sitting at a picnic table under a tree which had just dozens of very comfortable looking branches, but only one that suited a robin, who flew to the branch directly above me and left a large, white robin deposit on my arm.

• DUCK: When we lived on the mountain near Sand Rock, Marilyn and I had a duck. It was a gift. When it came to brains, that duck had none. He, or she, thought it was a dog, and followed our little dog and her litter of puppies around. He, or she, even attempted to nurse when the pups nursed. Eventually something much smarter and quicker than that duck caught it and carried it off, leaving only a few feathers. Probably a large garden slug.

• BLUE JAY: Yes, we had one. We raised it from a chicklet. It was too dumb to know it should eat regular blue jay food, like worms or bugs or berries. All it would eat was steak, which we furnished because as dumb as that blue jay may have been, we were dumber.


Which brings us back to those birds outside our house–the ones that charm us with their happy songs during daylight hours. But at night, when most reasonable creatures go to bed, our songbirds are just getting warmed up. We leave our bedroom windows open so as to let the air circulate and give the air conditioner its nightly rest. And stupid as those birds may be, they know this. There’s a congregation of them who hold forth just outside the window closest to our bed. They invariably wake up around 4 a.m., at which time the song service begins. The song leader is a nondenominational mockingbird, but I believe his congregation consists of Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and the occasional Episcopalian. When the mockingbird hits those first few notes, it is soothing, and makes you glad to be alive, until you notice the time. And that’s about the same time the entire congregation joins in. For awhile the various bird denominations seem to be in natural harmony, but sooner or later it all deteriorates and you know they’re arguing over deep, bird questions like if his eye is on the sparrow, then what about us wrens? And just what is a great speckled bird, anyhow? All of this inevitably leads to deeper theological bird discussions about free will versus predestination, and within a few minutes our yard is a tweeting, chirping, screeching, discordant din.

Since I’ve watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” more than once, I check every so often to make sure there are no holes in our window screens. I’d hate to get my eyes pecked out in the middle of the Doxology.