For the birds

It was a wonderful day in Auckland.

The sun was shining luminously.

The clouds floated gracefully across the light blue sky.

A stumpy blue bird spies a spot on the lengthy power line.

He ruffles his feathers vigorously.

Just then another bird comes and sits its bottom alongside him, yawning like a tired hippo.

The first wasn’t happy about this and they started to squabble.

But then another bird, and another join them, and they all started fighting like maniacs.

They look exactly the same, like octuplettes.

All of the kerfuffle is broken by a single noise, a jovial ‘hello’ from a strange different bird.

He was slim, quirky, and playful.

He was a friendly bird, but the other birds didn’t like him.

They started mocking him, making fun of him.

They were being nasty and horrible to him.

But he didn’t care, he persisted.

He flew awkwardly toward them, making a few jerks and wobbles along the way.

He sat down smack bang in the middle of them, squeezing the birds aside.

He was much heavier than the other birds, so heavy that he weighed them all down.

He pulled the power line right down.

The other birds were annoyed, one of them had a horrible idea.

He started pecking furiously at the big birds toes.

The big bird swung upside down like a bat, but he didn’t mind.

The other birds joined in pecking his feet.

Toe by toe, one by one, they pecked his toes off.

The birds were laughing cruelly, except one, who was probably the smartest.

He realized that the bullying they had done was about to come back to bite them.

And indeed it was.

When the last toe was pecked off, the powerline shot up a blinding speed.

It was so fast even a speed camera couldn’t have seen it.

The birds were flung up so rapidly they lost all their newly ruffled feathers.

But what goes up, must come down.

One by one they feel to the solid ground, naked as a newborn baby.

They were so embarrassed, ashamed of their nudity.

Their only refuge was the big bird, who was laughing his beautiful blue head off.