Kickass and Bird Feeder Speculation by Bill Stokes

Rennett Stowe from USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, buys the keeper’s contention that life is pretty much a process of ignoring reality and making of the truth what you will. This approach—now trending beyond all measure, is applied by the keeper to his balcony bird feeder and allows him to see the visiting sparrows as eagles, scarlet tanagers and an occasional passenger pigeon.

Never mind that the passenger pigeon went extinct when the last one—named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on Sept 1, 1914 following years of wholesale pigeon slaughter by market hunters and food chain profiteers.

As he watches the bird feeder visitors, the keeper muses of reincarnation possibilities and is faced with the stark reality that his best chance is likely to be as a sparrow.

Phyllis, on the other hand, has eagle and tanager potential, and the keeper tries not to worry about how the two of them might get together.

Phyllis will work it out: she is that kind of “bird.”