Uber Bird Story

I had a neckache all yesterday. It killed any desire to enjoy my rainy day off.

Then I saw this:



My head jerked up so fast, my neck snapped back into place. Heh. Sweeet. So now you know the cure for neckaches.

At Shit and Grits, there is a regular who always talk to imaginary people on the cell phone. He claims to have been tested by aliens too, so the waitresses all call him Alien.

Mr. Alien leaned across the aisle between the tables yesterday and casually asked Ranger Buddy, who was reading the newspaper, "Hey, Ranger Man, have you read the book March of the Dodo Birds?"

Ranger Buddy looked up, in his usual deadpan, excellent timing fashion, and said, "Don't you mean March of the Pelicans?"

"Oh yeah," Mr. Alien said, "March of the Pelicans. That's what I meant. Dodo birds are extinct. Did you read it?"

"Read about pelicans marching? No, was it a death march?"

"Well, they were all marching up to the north you know. It's cold up there. So I guess it's a death march of sorts."

At this point, I was trying not to snicker out loud behind my laptop. You got to picture this: an Alien abductee at one table. Two roofers, one with a laptop, at the other. Talking about pelicans marching.

One of the other roofers at another table, not so quick at deadpanning obviously, pompously corrected us all. "You guys are so wrong. It's March of the Penguins, you idiots."

At which, RB and I burst out laughing, because of course, it was just that funny.

Alien turned to the third roofer and superciliously replied, "Pelicans, Penguins, dodo birds, they are all the same."

"They're all marching the death march," RB said solemnly, and added, "and they'll all be extinct some time."

Mr. Alien nodded sagaciously.

"You guys are nuts," sniffed the other roofer. "Why don't you just go back to talking about aliens and politics?"

"We were," Ranger Buddy said.

Mr. Alien continued nodding. "Stupid penguin," he declared.

I've been wondering why I haven't been able to write well at that restaurant.... Dodo birds on a death march is just not conducive to a sexy scene between Helen and Shahrukh, you know?

So now I have a visual of thousands of pelicans, penguins and dodo birds marching. Except that the Dodo is really extinct. It was a bird that was too big to fly and had no natural enemies on the island of Mauritius. And with the arrival of explorers and DOGS...there went the last dodo birds.

Ah, my favorite diner has the best philosophers, don't you agree? And they don't even serve alcohol.

So, if some of you are unhappy about anything this morning, over personal or political events, hopefully, either the picture of the handsome Grey's Anatomy men would cure it, or at least, know that it's just the march of dodo birds. I mean, penguins. They're all the same when they're marching ;-).

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