– By William Cooper
For those of you over the age of, let’s say 35, you should ask yourself, now… yes, put down your soup for a moment… what it means that you are no longer a spring chicken. I’ll tell you what it means. It means that your meat is no longer as tender and attractive to some nameless carnivore (mountain lion), and so you are less likely to be suddenly eaten by something higher than you on the food chain. Springers are chickens clucked, er, plucked from chicken life shortly after being hatched, broiled in the fires of hell, and served up in various sauces probably for pudgy tourists to slaver over as they finger glossy travel brochures with their pudgy, greasy fingers. What a way to go. One moment you are scratching at the ground and wondering about the meaning of it all, and the next moment you are tits up next to a potato.
This is, therefore, a public service announcement. Be proud that you are now less likely to end up on somebody’s plate tomorrow and more likely to live until you slip into an endless sleep while sitting atop your egg.
The idea of Spring means different things to different people. Here in Seattle, one of the things it means is the start of the annual crow dive-bombing convention. I have a front-row seat from my window at work, which is also my window at home, and look forward to this competition every year. The rules are simple. Unsuspecting person walks down the street, ignoring all of the corvid cacophony because crows are experts in being so prominent that they end up being ignored. Some magical boundary is crossed. There’s a blur of black wings and the top of said person’s head is lopped clean off. Okay, maybe it’s not that extreme, but it certainly puts the sudden fear of aerial attack into those hapless humans who squawk and flail their arms and run, alarmed that they’ve been betrayed by the normally passive Z-axis.
A few years back, hikers were warned at this time of the year to keep off a certain hiking trail because a solitary owl had taken a particular interest in stealing hats. The official story was that from the air, the hats looked like small, tasty animals, but I don’t buy it. I think there’s a sub-Reddit somewhere where the finer points of cranial attacks are discussed by users like ImNotABirdReally32 and OwlBeTakingYourHat65.
To sum up, welcome to spring, be glad you aren’t a chicken, and for the love of Pete, watch your heads our there.
In this episode Spring has sproinged for both of us. William celebrates hawt toilet paper couture with a hefty deposit to his Daylight Savings Account, and then reveals that he was the classic-computer-using prodigy behind some of the most inane afternoon television promos of the early 1980s. Scott confirms the clueless husband bias, even if you happen to be Jack Ryan, and provides some much-needed wife-annoyance advice. Then it is time for comparative bird studies featuring the noisy bird brigade of Washington versus the elusive red-winged blackbirds of Ohio, who we are pretty sure have been hired as the muscle in a protection racket (rabbit). Bitten by the seasonal clearing bug, Scott heads JUST beyond the porch to the Mound of Doom, which claims the life of a hedge trimmer, but yields an important archaeological discovery. It’s a real bonfire of the Insanities. Buoyed up by his success, Scott takes a trip to a flea market, which as it turns out is named exactly for what you’d think it would be named for, but holds many priceless treasures of a long-forgotten age, all for under two dollars admission. We end with a visit to an Irish Spring as the Skip Jacks tell us how things are in Glocca Mora. Turns out, things are full of Stereophonic sound dating back to the 1880s and heavily researched by Googling. But wait, there’s more. What begins as a Skippy Jacky ditty turns into an in-depth literally critique of a Longfellow poem. Who could see that coming? Bells are Ringing for both Dean Martin and Bing Crosby, who as it turns out, are not the same person. Sweet? Hot? Blue? Triple check!
The MOUND of DOOM:
Links:
The Apple Lisa
Patriot Games Movie Clip
Spring Birds
The Skip-Jacks – Sweet, Hot and Blue
How are Things in Glocca Morra?
The Courtship of Miles Standish – Longfellow
