the bird whisperer
[Readers who last all the way to the middle of this two-minute article on birdwatching will discover why I lead with a picture of my great uncle Ker when he was a young girl.]
The Bird Whisperer
The females are yelling real-estate lies from the sidelines as I walk the country lane.
“Location location,” they say, but in their local language. Female kildeers. Not sure if I mentioned the kildeer part earlier. They’re birds, a skinny version of a seagull, with far-flung monkey arms for wings.
Location location. Shouldn’t there be another location in there? Third’s the charm. “Save it for a tweet,” I say, because it might not be Twitter anymore but you can still tweet. Go tell everyone how you made six figures dropshipping on X. Birds have those great eyes, shouldn’t they be able to read my aura and see that I come in peace, that I’m not trying to locate their nests?
Hey human, wanna see my nest? [kildeer flies me over to an empty robin’s nest] Suck it, mammal. Jeez. We both know that having that robin’s nest for dinner would be cultural appropriation. We’re not China. Yet.
Animals are such liars. They start young with the camo and take it from there. Deeks, pivots, fakes, zigzags, fake broken wings, general fake. They call all this fakery “nature.” Who needs it? I get enough of that from Tim Denning the writing guru. Plus kildeer, really? Is that even a real name? I’ll bet the deer are quaking in their hoofs.
As I stroll along, the females are hawking their wheres. I was going to start this article with that line but can you imagine? I already lost 214 out of 213 followers on Wednesday and the last thing I need is someone telling me I’m spelling wheres wrong. Says he’s a doctor but he can’t spell wheres. The algo, that dirty-minded seventh-grader, might even free-associate from wheres to whores. Wheres is one squiggle shy of a picnic. I could spell females tomales but probably all this fucking around with neutering everything, all this using pussyfoot euphemisms and nothing-to-look-at-here spelling, just attracts the eye of Mordor. It sure makes me not understand what I just said. Trying to evade the algo and getting lost yourself is like getting the pronouns right and the idea wrong. They’s doin what now? They cut off what again? Both of them? No, just they? I try to be supportive but then again bras were supposed to be supportive and look where that got us. When it comes to gender I’m losing English without gaining French. Does that rock look like a lady to you? Two ladies? Back in my great uncle’s day no one thought twice about dressing all the little boys as ladies. We never heard them complaining about that. Because they were dead by the time I was born.
So, country living, I was saying.
The real-estate-agent lady birds are screaming lactation lactation. A blackbird flashing red is trying to peck my head but I thought “a head” and wore a bicycle helmet for just such a moment. Strolling in nature can be this relaxing.
—DDT
Niagara on Earth
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I loved the photo of your uncle when he was a girl but seems like once upon a time the gentleman really seemed to dig fancy clothes with all the frills. Bird bros have those fine feathers that the lady birds fancy. They don't seem to mind at all that the males are better dressed while the females are plain-Janes. You'll not see that among the human realtors, especially when they're on a billboard.
I grew up in the hood with the Red-winged blackbirds, never had one do a fly-by pecking at me.