Monday, April 02, 2007

ANOTHER "ELVIS" SIGHTING

"And so they linked their hands and danced
Round in circles and in rows
And so the journey of the night descends
When all the shades are gone
"A garland gay we bring you here
And at your door we stand
It is a sprout well budded out
The work of our Lord's hand"
the mummers dance

April has come and Spring erupts for this half of the globe; those even in cooler climes note the irrepressible budding of the new and the young bursting pollinated feeling in the wind. The soil groaning has given way to sprout and shoot and leaf.
Nature trumps in spades.
Persephone rules and ritual abounds. Ostara fills her nesting place.
You see the signs everywhere.

Here in Texas we have Grackles; they are like inbred Ravens and no one loves them. They are unwanted. Ugly and squawky looking they congregate in great undesired numbers with their ugly selves.
City Officials use dynamite, and shotguns to scare them from commercial areas. Mesh drop cloths can be seen hanging suspended from trees in posh parking lots in protection of Beamers and Porsches and such.
They are quite the nuisance, though I doubt they realize it. I am sure that among their Bird-fellows they are proud and trust in their Collective Unconscious in disregard for these busy noisy ugly humans. To a Grackle I imagine we Humans seem to be a dirty and wasteful creature, congregating in great numbers, busy and greedy with far too many devices.
They see all the signs.

But still, Grackle has his own Ritual to attend to.
Take note of the males with mud colored feathers all puffed and wings suggestively splayed trying to impress their female counterparts. These homely males imagine themselves handsome birds;. They are tireless in their advances, taking on several of the females at any one time. They dance and strut about.
Every Grackle in the County is makin’ like Elvis Presley in feathers, so showy, so suave, and so confident.
They be All Shook Up.
I do sense a bit of desperation.
It is hard to tell if the Females are horrified at this behavior, or if they are just being coy.

I have yet to have any visual confirmation that these tactics have been successful, other than the preponderence of Grackles.....and I am thankful for that.Perhaps it is best that we only see signs of the workings of this World and are spared the full shock force of spring.

4 comments:

Dave Renfro said...

A buddy of mine from Anahuac and I rednecked-up the Tanya Tucker song about the sparrow in a hurricane. We called it "Like a Grackle in a Twister." He had to point a grackle out to me on one of our road trips to Texas. I had never heard of them.

I do love Spring!

~Dave

Old Lady said...

I call them Parking Lot Birds. I feed them shamelessly when I go shopping. They are the Avian Homeless. Living on wire and architectual abuttments, living off what man throws away, surviving day to day. I love those little buggers!

Mother of Invention said...

I'm sure we have our fair share of "Human Grackles" strutting about trying in vain to impress females! Obnoxious!

Nicely written post!

GrizzBabe said...

MOI, I think the human equivalent of a grackle may be a used car salesman dressed in a plaid polyester suit with his shirt unbottoned to his navel.