Birdbrain

Birds entertain the eye. I try never to look at human females age 12-45. What’s left but art, architecture and the movies? Ben’s spending July in the Pyrenees, and so we spent Sunday afternoon traipsing about Clay Pit Ponds State Park breaking in his new hiking boots. Catbirds, nothing but catbirds. I prefer baseball on the radio to the real thing but still can’t “hear” a catbird’s meow. And I’ve never consciously seen a cowbird. Cowbirds lay their eggs in other bird’s nests. But a catbird, they say, will always spot a cowbird egg, and over the side it goes. Hey, they’re pretty, and they don’t all have birdbrains. Vin Scully the baseball play-by-play commentator popularized the phrase “the catbird seat.” Catbirds do sometimes swing on a tree’s topmost branch, although in my limited observation mockingbirds do so moreso. I like Charles Bukowski’s Mockingbird, Wish Me Luck. I pray nothing bad happens to my son in France.