Wednesday, August 19, 2009

BIRDS 6

Here in the UK, the luminous yellow reflective jacket is the new uniform of choice for the wannabe Stasi or Gestapo functionary, and other aspiring goons. Alongside the snoopers, informants, finers, interveners, and 'community police', a new squad in Aldeburgh will now also have to be decked out in said jackets in order to enforce a stringent new policy against those that would dare feed the local seagulls.

It's enough to compel you to initiating a nationwide campaign to start chumming the birds with raw meat. Resistance to the oppression begins here, with the gulls leading the way.

In the meantime, I am once again most grateful to Lorin for sending this moving anecdote:

When I was very young (five or six years old), I had two parakeets, a male and a female, who I named Biff and Plumas. They were little splashes of bright color, so, so cute in a way one can only appreciate before the age of ten or after the age of 30. I would open the cage to let them flap around the house a bit and they would return to the cage in five minutes or so. Knowing what I know now, they both would have flown away forever had they not been purchased at the most sickening of all retail spots, the 'pet store' where birds have their wings clipped to keep them seemingly domesticated but ultimately crippled and reliant on the cage.

I recall the day Plumas died. I had a ceremonial shoebox burial in my family's backyard. The strongest memory, though, was Biff's mourning. I am not abusing the word; he had an actual, visible mourning. He lingered upon the place in the cage where my mother found Plumas dead, he refused to eat anything, even sesame treats, and he heaved pained, horrible coos that sounded EXACTLY like human crying. Not a pleasant memory, by any means, but at an early age learned that a bird is capable of (and imbued with) the kind of dynamic passion that humans stupidly mislabel as 'feelings', or worse, 'a soul'.

BIRDS 5
BIRDS 4
BIRDS 3
BIRDS 2
BIRDS 1

1 comment:

SARCOMASIGN BLOC said...

I, runt of the litter, have a 'COMMUNITY PAYBACK' vest. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/02/community-payback-orange-vests-slough
Good anecdote. I've had many similar experiences - Scottie Dog puppies born in the corner of my bedroom during a powerful storm when I was a small boy. One died and Kirsty the mummy came over to my bedside drawer leaving her litter for a while to be with her little lost one - her body heat haemorrhaging even in my loving hands. That sublime tiny black puppy rested in my sacred drawer.
I used to wear a black arm band at junior school in memory of all the animals in laboratories. Slowly but surely I realized I had to move as far away as possible from violence towards the 'weaker beings' as I could and finally dropped all 'animal products' from my diet. Protect them. Never enough.

http://www.viva.org.uk/


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88kMJXphN0k

Gaze at each other.

Wolves at the door here so I'm rushing off but I'll write again soon.

"NOUMENAL ANIMAL"[sic]