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| English: Restless Flycatcher (Myiagra inquieta), commonly known as the "Scissor Grinder" due to the unique rasping call the bird makes whilst hovering. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
You know, it’s funny how we use animals often to
describe human behavior without thinking about whether or not they’re
appropriate or active. For instance, when we say someone’s as ‘silly as a
goose,’ have there ever been any studies to demonstrate the intelligence, or
lack thereof, of geese? I mean, geese demonstrate behavior, particularly in
their mating habits, that we humans could well emulate. Did you know that geese
mate for life? I once saw a gander perched beside the mangled corpse of its mate
that had been struck by a car near the suburban subway station I commuted to
work from; sitting there for days until the maintenance people finally carted
the dead bird away. I’ve often wondered if that grief stricken bird didn’t
follow the truck to wherever they take the remains of road kill, and sat nearby
until it too finally died from starvation.
Having said that, though, there is one
characterization that I’ve had occasion to witness in action that is dead
accurate in its description. The term ‘birdbrain’ as applied to wildly erratic
behavior.
One day, sitting in my garage, where I do most of my
painting and sketching because I like to smoke my pipe when I’m engaged in such
activity, and my wife doesn’t allow me to smoke inside the house, I observed a
small bird engaging in what could only be called ‘bird brained’ behavior.
Now, in order for you to understand all that
transpired, I have to set the stage. When I’m working in the garage, I keep the
door open about two feet to allow for the smoke from my pipe to be whisked to
the outside. That’s to appease my wife who also doesn’t like it if I stand too
near her car when I smoke, for fear I’ll leave tobacco odor on her precious
conveyance. I tend to leave the door that way throughout the day, and at some
point, a small bird must have come in under the door and flown up to the upper
level of storage shelves where I keep old boxes of documents, computer parts,
and other items. I’d been away from the garage for a few hours, working in my
upstairs office on my latest manuscript, and when I hit a patch where I needed
to step away from the keyboard to let the narrative brew in my mind for a
while, decided to go back to the garage and work on the cover I was doing for
another book that I was readying for publication.
My entrance from the kitchen must have startled the
roosting bird, for it flew down from the shelf, to about the top of the garage
door, and began dashing itself against the glass windows in an effort to get
away. Not wanting to see the poor thing hurt itself, I tried shooing it down
toward the two-foot gap at the bottom of the door, but, to no avail. That dumb
bird had its eyes on those clear squares of glass as avenues of escape, and was
not to be persuaded that its inability to pass through them was more than some
temporary impediment. This went on for over an hour. I even tried opening the
door all the way, but that only frightened it back to the top shelf.
Now and then, it would fly back down, but never
lower than about a foot from the bottom of the door, which was now high enough
to leave a more than six foot avenue of escape. A large opening that, for some
reason, the bird failed to see as the way to go. It just continued to fly down,
brush against the door, go back up to the windows – which were now parallel
with the ceiling – against which it would bang futilely, and then back to the
shelf.
My plans to finish my painting were put on hold as I
vainly tried to figure a way to get that damned bird to fly down toward the
floor and out of my garage. It didn’t help that in its panic, it had dotted my
wife’s black Mercedes with several gray blotches in its flights over it.
That, friends, is a pure definition of bird brain.
It’s also an example of Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
Of course, the story does have a happy ending. I
decided to leave the garage to the bird – with the door left open – and went
back inside to fix lunch. When I went back outside later in the afternoon, the
bird had gone. I assume it finally figured out that that large space beneath
the door against which it had been battering itself might be softer and finally
flown away. My garage was bird free.
I got the painting finished, but not that day. It took
me an hour to remove all those gray blotches from my wife’s car. Fortunately,
she was out shopping that day in her other car. Her baby was all shiny when she
came home, and she never knew what had transpired. I’m no bird brain. I have no
intention of ever telling her.
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