Tuesday, March 5, 2013

If I were a bird

Today morning I spent a great deal of time observing birds.  I usually do spend a great deal of time observing birds, but today morning was different.

The peacock is one beautiful, graceful bird.  At the risk of sounding reverse misogynist (if such a thing could exist), peacocks are the only species where males are more beautiful and attractive than their female counterpart. [if anyone takes an offense to this, let it be known to the world at large that I am cute and I should be forgiven for everything I say - you may burn my effigy, though]

Anyway, so peacocks are beautiful, beautiful birds.  [it's funny because the Hindi for birds is chidiya, and when I hear chidiya, the common domestic sparrow comes to my mind, but it's hard to call a peacock a chidiya. Same goes for owl. Dude, owl as a chidiya is hard to imagine. Anyhoo, I digress]  As I was looking at the majestic birds, one of them chose that opportune moment to run across the garden.

That was the scariest thing I had seen in recent times after that ghost girl in the attic in The Grudge.  The peacock shed all it's grace and ran on it's two distinctly ugly (like God *had* to give a flaw) feet.

That is when it struck me, the birds *run* on their *two* feet.  Let me clarify, ever since I was a little girl, and my father took me around the society showing me birds, squirrels, rabbits and snakes, I have known that birds have two feet.  But I have always seen them perched on those feet.  Never really saw them *run*.

And then I saw a bunch of mynas running in similar fashion, though not as scary as peacocks.  I was so fascinated by the birds running that I almost bumped into a supremely cute looking guy.  [I wish I *had* bumped into him, though, *cough*]

What is so weird about someone running on two feet, you ask? We, as humans, also run on two feet.  Well, the thing is, we humans stand vertically when we run.  Birds body is horizontally placed on their feet - so they have to balance themselves to ensure they do not fall backward or forward when they lean.  This makes me really sad now.

It makes me sadder by the fact that despite having wings, some birds chose to walk/run/jump.  I mean, if I were a bird and I had wings and could fly, I would never stop flying.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Liked the way you ended the blog..why would you walk/run/jump if you had wings..