LOOK! UP IN THE SKY! IT'S A BIRD!

Blog number sixty-nine                                    12 Jan. 2006

Back in the early sixties I was looking out the front window and I saw a gray-backed bird with a white belly carrying a gray-backed bird with an orange belly up into a tree across the street.  I went out to see what was going on and the orange-breasted bird fell to the ground while the white-bellied one flew off.  "What the hell, " I thought.

I picked up the fallen bird and it was dead, but still warm.  I wondered if the other bird was a family member and was trying to help.  They were both the same size and similar looking - might be one was a male, the other female.

Both of these birds were common around there, but I had never seen this behavior before.

Years later, I don't remember now how it came about, but I realized that one bird was a shrike and had evidently just killed the other bird.  The tree that the shrike took his meal into was a mimosa tree, which has long sharp thorns and shrikes are known for impaling their prey on thorns for ease in eating and also as a storage place.

I knew about shrikes previous to this, but it never occurred to me that I would ever see one.  I had this kind of a blind spot where if I read about something in a book, it was not part of my world but more a part of the world of the book, if that makes sense to you.

In biology I studied amoebas.  I never ever expected to see any of these, for I did not expect them to exist outside of the text books, but one day in biology lab. I saw, under a microscope, an amoeba.  Wow!  Just like the pictures.

We studied hydras - which are animals that are nowhere more than two cells deep.  The cells which make up the lining of the stomach touch the cells which make up the lining of the skin of the animal. The head has several waving arms which gives it the name of the Hydra in Greek mythology.  The hydra walks by going end over end, like a slinky toy.

We lived in the mountains of Coastal California for a while.  We had two beautiful streams that cut through the property, and on some of the rocks in the stream, were these slimy things - like moss only slimier.  One day, kind of day dreaming, I was looking at things and I noticed a movement of the slime.  I looked closer, and I saw hydras!  My God, will wonders never cease?

It was on this stream that I saw Dipper birds.  These birds look like a thrush, gray in color, about the size of a robin.  They walk underwater!  Not swim - walk.

I also saw male and female worts - a kind of plant a little more along the evolution ladder than moss or lichens, but less than ferns.  I studied these in Biology too and never expected to see them.  The male and female don't look like the same plant.

When I was studying Abnormal Psychology, I always assumed we were talking about "Others" who projected, obsessed, delusioned, and it was only after undergoing psychoanalysis that I realized we ALL do ALL of those things, just in varying degrees.  A little bit and you're normal, more and you're eccentric, more and you're crazy.

I don't know why I separated worlds in books from worlds outside of books. Too much fiction reading maybe?