War

I have a veritable war going on just outside my window. At any given moment my humming bird feeder will have anywhere from one to twenty would be customers. They zip about, they fight, they land, they flit, and they attack. Birds are mean.

My guineas are mean as well. Last year I started with six. One, ended up with an injured foot and automatically became low man on the pole. He (or she) was literally hen pecked all day long. Then one day death came in an instant, and just like that, a new low man was born. To me, it was hard to tell why, but to the others it was easy. They spent the rest of the summer chasing and pecking at him (her) until she too was murdered. Then a new low man was born.

I live in a rather secluded area and get to see many types of birds. We put out feed in the winter and watch them going in and out of their bird houses in the summer. They are blue, yellow, black, grey, red, pink, brown, and everything in between. They are big, small, fast, slow, in the air, and on the ground. Their behaviours are a varying as their looks, but the one thing which they all have in common is that they are assholes.

I can only imagine what this would was like when dinosaurs roamed the planet. Large, constantly shitting, and forever battling. Perhaps that asteroid did us a favour. At least the devolved species of dinosaurs are small.