4.24.15 Seems wrong, doesn't it? Until you realize that it's simply how life develops

      This spring we have Cowbirds at the birdfeeding table.

      While I sit quietly in the mornings, on the sofa by the big front window, and watch all the avian families still come feed as they find mates and grow small soft living eggs within their soft bellies, I watch these birds who can so easily be demonized.

      Cowbirds have normal bird lives with the exception of the way in which they lay their eggs in various neighborhood nests of others. They're just wired that way. Their eggs are cared for by others, unsuspecting or no, and when they hatch, they are genetically designed to push the other eggs or baby birds out of that nest, and be fed and grow big and strong, often bigger than the adoptive parents, while the Cowbird parents go off and do who knows what.

      Seems wrong, doesn't it? Until you realize that it's simply how life develops and grows.

      Somehow, whenever I see their beautiful black feathers with the rich brown hood, I slowly move from distaste....to imagining being them. Being born all kinds of things, right? A slug or a flea or an Eagle or a …Cowbird. 

      That song my kids sang when young shows up in my mind: "All God's children got a place in the choir. Some sing low; some sing high. Some sing outside on the telephone wire. And some just clap their hands, paws, and anything they got, now."