Peacock Banned From Plane (MetroNews)

I was there. Flight 326 out of Florida. Jet Blue.

It wasn’t so bad. It won’t fit in a bird cage, they said. Put the bird in a damned kennel, I said. Or whatever you call those cages.

It doesn’t have to be walking around in the aisle, I said. It was worse than the drink cart. You couldn’t get to the bathroom. And speaking of bathrooms, it was worse than a Canadian Goose with the you-know-what.

Jet Blue didn’t ban the peahen. She was no problem. She got into somebody’s pretzels but that was all. A bit of a wallflower.

How different can bird sizes be, you ask. My budgie sat on my shoulder for most of the flight. That big galoot peacock would come alongside and the two of them would eye each other. Comical sight! The peahen pretended not to notice (my Mert is a girl).

Blind long snapper wants to become starting QB (CNN)

A Post for Anglers

If you love fishing like I do, then you’re well familiar with the long snapper, that redoubtable piscine gladiator who will fight you to the finish once hooked.

But perhaps you have never encountered the Mbisi version of this snapper (Lutjanus Bwanobu). Living in the dark rivers that flow through the limestone caverns beneath Mount Mbumibiawnabu, caverns carved out over the eons, the Mbisi snapper is the opposite of a fighter. It is easily frightened and once in that state, wants to be QB (EATEN) or LB (at least CHEWED) (emphasis theirs).

The Mbisi fishermen squat on the banks of those stygian courses underground and clap their hands loudly when they hear a passing snapper. The startled fish flops out of the water at their feet, ready to be taken home and fried in a pan.

The tribesmen charge only a modest fee to act as your guide in the caverns. The only difficulty you will encounter in hiring them is the thousand-mile journey on foot through steaming jungles rife with the tsetse fly and swarming QBQ (EAT YOU) short snappers in the swamps.

Bee in the Snow

Con Chapman has posted a poem about a bee in the snow, on his blog here.

You would expect a hive of honeybees to be warm and cozy in the winter, with the bees staying in, but the reality, as is so often the case with Nature, is harsher.

If you’ve visited The Hive, you know what I mean.

You’ve got the Queen ruling the roost (if we think of bees as chickens and the queen bee as a rooster), surrounded by her loutish drones (if we think of male bees as Marlon Brandos in wife-beaters).

The Queen’s worker-bee sisters are no more than slaves (if we think of them as the pyramid builders in The Ten Commandments).

Is it any wonder that the occasional worker-bee kicks over the traces and leaves the hive (if we think of bees as mules)?

Or perhaps she left the hive in search of a drone of her own, or worse, was caught red-handed in the hive with one of the Queen’s drones (if we think of bees as having hands).

Perhaps she was an evolved snow-bee out searching for the first crocus (if we think of mutant bees as Homo Sapiens in a world of Neanderthals.)

Did I mention that the bee in the snow was not smiling (if bees had lips, so forth).