dragon@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Sam Conway) (02/13/91)
The following was written by Dave Barry in his book "Bad Habits", and is reproduced here without the slightest bit of permission from the author or publisher in a flagrant violation of international copy- right laws, and if anyone wants to sue me over it they can get stuffed. Enjoy! ********************************************************************** Everybody should know something about birds, because birds are everywhere. Zoologists tell us there are over 23,985,409,723,098, 050,744,885,143 birds in the city of Lincoln, Nebraska, alone, which is one of the many reasons not to go there. Now, perhaps you get a bit nervous when you think about all those birds out there. Perhaps you remember Alfred Hitchcock's famous movie THE BIRDS, in which several million birds get together one afternoon and decide to peck a number of Californians to death. Well, you needn't worry. First, any animal tha attacks Californians is a friend of Man. And second, THE BIRDS was just a movie; in real life, your chances of being pecked to death by birds are no greater than your chances of finding a polite clerk at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. There is an incredible range of birds, from the ostrich, which weighs up to six hundred pounds and stands up to nine feet tall and can run two hundred miles an hour and can crush a man's head as if it were a ping-pong ball; to the tiny bee hummingbird, which is a mere 6.17 decahedrons long and can fly right into your ear and hum its tiny wings so hard you think your brain is going to vibrate into jelly and you will eventually go insane. Birds, like most mammals, especially lawyers, evolved from reptiles. The first bird appeared millions of years ago, during the Jurassic Period (which gets its name from the fact that it was a fairly jurassic period). What happened was this reptile, inspired by some mysterious, wondrous inspiration to evolve, climbed up a Jurassic Period tree and leaped from the topmost branch and thudded into the ground at 130 miles an hour. Soon birds had spread to the four corners of the earth, which is where they are today. And wherever there are birds, there are also bird watchers, in case the birds decide to try something. Bird watchers are known technically as BIRD WATCHERS, which comes from the Latin word for "ornithologist". Bird watchers divide birds into four main groups: BORING LITTLE BROWNISH BIRDS THAT ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE: Wrens, chickadees, sparrows, nutcrackers, spanners, catcalls, dogbirds, hamsterbirds, flinches. BIRDS THAT CAN LIFT REALLY HEAVY THINGS, SUCH AS YOUR CAR: Albatrosses, winches, pterodactyls, unusually large chickadees, elephant birds, emus. BIRDS WITH NAMES THAT YOU ARE GOING TO THINK I MADE UP BUT DIDN'T: Boobies, frigate birds, nightjars, frogmouths, oilbirds. BIRDS THAT MAKE THOSE JUNGLE NOISES YOU ALWAYS HEAR DURING NIGHT SCENES IN JUNGLE MOVIES: Parrots, cockatoos, pomegranates, macadams, cashews, bats. Your avid bird watcher spends lots of time creeping around with binoculars, trying to identify new and unusual birds. The trouble is that most birds are of the little-and-brownish variety, all of which look exactly alike, and all of which are boring. So what bird watchers do is make things up. If you've ever spent any time at all with bird watchers, you've probably noticed that every now and then they'll whirl around, for no apparent reason, and claim they've just seen some obscure, tiny bird roughly 6,500 feet away. They'll even claim they can tell whether it was male or female, which in fact you can't tell about birds even when they're very close, what with all the feathers and everything. I advise you to do what most people do when confronted with bird watchers, which is just to humor them. If their lives are so dull and drab that they want to fill them with imaginary birds, why stand in the way? Here's how you should handle it: BIRD WATCHER: Did you see that? YOU: What? BIRD WATCHER: Over there, by that mountain (he gestures to a mountain in the next state). It's a male Malaysian sand-dredging coronet. Very, very rare in these parts. YOU: Ah, yes, I see it. BIRD WATCHER: You do? YOU: Certainly. It's just to the left of that female European furloughed pumpkinbird. See it? BIRD WATCHER: Uh, yes, of course I see it. YOU: Look, they're playing backgammon. BIRD WATCHER: Um, so they are. If you have a good imagination, you may come to really enjoy the bird- watching game, in which case you should join a bird-watching group. These groups meet regularly, and usually after a few minutes they're detecting obscure birds on the surface of Saturn. It's a peck of fun. ************************************************************************ (Remember, Dave Barry wrote this, not me...) -- Sam Conway * What shape do you usually have? dragon@eleazar.dartmouth.edu * Mickey Mouse shape? Smarties Chemistry Dept., Dartmouth College, NH * shape? Amphibious landing craft Vermont Raptor Center (VINS) * shape? Poke in the eye shape?