Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes along the information from the keeper that when he and Phyllis hiked the trail around Middleton’s Tiedeman Pond it included a blackbird lesson on territorial claims as an irritated male redwing rode on the back of a sandhill crane on the trail just ahead of the keeper and Phyllis.
Among the morals to be drawn is that sharing is important, differing interests can be served without damage, and if something as comparatively big as a dinosaur shows up, it calls for getting on its back and pecking the hell out of it until it leaves.
In a reverse application of anthropomorphism, the keeper sees himself as a frustrated blackbird pecking away at the towering spine of the great bird of political ignorance and arrogance now blocking the trail ahead.
Phyllis will be taking photos.
Photo by Bill Stokes