As soon as she was privy to the blues of her winged friends, Livia set out to investigate. She dove into the inner sanctum of her large, many-layered wooden nest, toiling and tinkering within. Flashes of colored light and smoke occasionally burst out window or chimney, followed with a birdthroated sound of discovery and a continued hum of bustling quiet. This scene was a regular one in this particular patch of well-wooded Forest, up in the Northest of Borderlands. Most observers of said phenomena, however, did not boast human eyes. The thick perimeter of Birchwood winked at the close circle of Willows hugging the house, passing knowing glances about this most dear of inhabitants. She’s on to something. A breeze swayed softly in the Willows’ hair. Indeed. The sun glinted just so, from Birch to Birch. A few glides from each, where Pigeons roosted uneasily in an oddly-shaped grain tower, the air was fairly sparkled with the invisible messengers of tree-speak, and the silent mood was inexplicably calmed with each passing breath.
The colors and caws emanating from the cottage continued well into the yellowing of the day. Bit by bit, the only color to burst from the cloistered artist’s lab was blue. Blue, blue, blue.
Before sunset, Livia returned to the Tower, steeped in elysian temperament, with the messages that would assuage the flock-panic of The Blue Scare. News of the discovery was spread quickly through the Tower flockery, and messengers were sent wheeling Westward to deliver to the Rocky Mountain crew for immediate proliferation amongst the broader PLPL network. Because the Chicago meeting was soon upon them, the flock of Livia’s Tower voted unanimously to deliver the message in person to their Eastern affiliates in two days’ time. Beyond the two outposts, the weather would carry the rest.
They would meet after a day’s flight, and so they settled down to roost until the morning star sounded.
Most of them, that is.
Florence was still awake. She had not quite been able to synthesize the information about high protein content of base grains with what she already knew of Livia’s actual designs. She calmed herself with the reassuring knowledge that she knew more about the inner workings of Livia’s grand mission than nearly any other Pigeon. That meant she was rightly privy to more worry than most of the flock. Understandably so; her bird-sized nervous system successfully micro-processed information made to pass through much larger bodies. This is why she was able to act as messenger to the messengers. Even so, she fretted wildly in the dark quiet of night, wondering if the old lady was actually satisfied with her protein findings, or if there was more to know.
There was always more to know.
Florence found herself pacing outside Livia’s window in the pearly moonlight. Feeling her grey matter pulsing with even more lightning storms than usual, she practiced the practice, letting her wobbling circles move the thoughts expeditiously through the feeling-filter: lists of things to worry about, nonsensical pattern-recognition, unprocessed yet perfectly-filed synchronicities, film reel of the day’s visual input at 75 frames per second… there it was! She had come across a troubling bit of newspaper during that afternoon’s birddropping rounds. That’s right. The headlines that caught her peripheral vision[1] in a flapping glossy digest of madness, discovered at her usual park-pecking spot in town, they’d produced an emotive wave that matched this feeling of dread that had been churning her insides since sundown. Their content was frankly hideous. Horrendous. It didn’t make any sense. It must be faulty information. Flapping madly now herself, Florence toddled in agitated circles, lit up with the feeling that matched the thought that matched the feeling. There it was; she’d properly tracked it down, but now it was fluttering through her every nerve. She paced and flapped in circles, looking like a holographic cartoon of birdly befrazzlement whose signal was fritzing out every few seconds. The trees looked on, sighing compassion toward the creature, but it would be a moment before such subtleties reached through the heightened emotive scramble.
The old woman inside the cottage was taking her time with tinctures, carefully carrying a balance of jars and vials down into the cellar and coming back with handfuls of teeny paper scrolls which she placed one by one into a vast wall made of tiny labeled drawers. The drawers were tiny, that is, in terms of their square faces, but lengthy enough to be drawn out across the entire width of the room; each note had to be filed in exactly its right place.
Florence was quite familiar with this nightly ritual, and Livia moved with a studied efficiency. Even so, ole Flo found herself increasingly feather-ruffled by the slow tedium of it while anxiety was twiddling her nerves at every step. A breeze shifted just so, reminding her of a scent of her fledgling years. She took a deep inhale of it and then called up all her reserves to calm herself down. She connected to the slow-paced heartbeat of the All-Bird: O-gi-maa, O-gi-maa, O-gi-maa. Three long breaths later, however long that registered by the moon’s crawl across the sky, she finally felt calm enough to hold still. All was well. She recalled her place. The anxiety-producing thoughtfeeling was a human thing, and she was simply a Messenger. She would do her best by it, as with any message.
In that very moment, the old woman at last looked over, spotting her moonlit friend through the window with neither hurry nor surprise.
Livia opened the door and stepped into the threshold to receive Florence gracefully on her shoulder.
“Yes, dear? I trust you have something to say at the end of this long day?”
Flo bobbed her head so vigorously she almost catapulted herself off the shoulder perch. Livia ignored the extreme cuteness factor in this gesture, walking swiftly to the communication station to hear what had worked her friend into such a tizzy.
The Communiputor, as it was fondly called by its frequenters, was a human-bird interface kept in the back office of Livia’s house. By human sight, it was a shape loosely based on a computer, but as if it were built by a 5 year old with freedom and crayon to properly cartoon what a computer should look like. Its screen took up the entire wall and it included small cupboards for manual input and output. It was enshrined in a thick green vine of some sort, growing plentifully down the edges onto the floor and up toward the windows. It indeed had a keyboard, but it was spilled out into a maze of squares on the surface of the table, lit up with the winking sparkle of a tetrachromatic spectrum. The letters were oddly ordered, and there were many more of them, with a variety of repeats and doubles, collated phonemes and dipthongs huddled close. They appeared to move as the birdbeak touched them, lining up for ease of availability as the path of letters chosen translated to a natural landing of words upon the screen. Notably, instead of landing in left-to-right linear fashion, the words arose seemingly at random as the shape of each sentence was found. Livia watched in measured attention, gathering her notepad, a multicolored hydra of a pen, and a handful of the heart-shaped leaves to chew upon.
“Livia. I do not know what the trouble is, but I’ve tracked my inner thought-spin as you’ve taught us, and I believe there is something Extra Troubling about this blue matter. I don’t know why, but it has to do with a headline I saw earlier today. And so I must ask: are you entirely certain about your findings?”
The biped chewed thoughtfully on a leaf. “You are astute, my dear. I have passed on the information found today in my studies. It is a simple solution, tried and true, and it resonates with the research found many times over by long-time fanciers and bird-tenders. Too much protein can indeed cause a blueing of the skin. So yes, I did think it was complete. But, my well-attuned friend, as I’ve been tending to the Integration Station tonight, I found some stray ends. Of the protein spike, I am certain, but I have found more complex causes for concern.”
The beak pecked swiftly: “What? What concern?”
A small smile graced the thin craggy face. The trust and respect were mutual, and this dear bird came circling back in exactly the right time, every time. Livia took a slow breath and organized her findings. As she spoke, she stood and moved her hands on the screen, drawing up brightly colored images, each matching a different section of speech. The bird was simultaneously learning new information and cataloguing known information. The Communiputor functioned not only as a translation of bird thought into human formation, but vice versa. Communication was most efficient when both creatures simultaneously learned the language of the other. Livia learned this from the Birds early on in their work together, and they’d built a machinated science of it, tuned down to the most subtle of listening capacities between languages. [2]
“Well,” Livia ran her fingers briefly over the soft silvery backfeathers of her small distinguished companion and then began to lay the story out. “The trouble with it being only caused by protein interactions is that it came on so suddenly. I’ve been feeding you this same base feed for years now, and we’ve not recently changed the vitamedicine supplement recipe. It is possible they’ve only recently changed their nutrition formulas to include such a protein spike, but it is more likely that that percentage gradually increased over months or years. So, if there is another contributing factor, it may include… something I don’t like at all.”
The bird nearly flipped over pecking out the single word, “WHAT?!”
Livia intentionally slowed and calmed her voice as she drew forth imagery on the screen. “I simply need to know where the extra spike might have come from. Is there any additional food source you folks have found? If you birds have been eating from a public store at all, it could mean big trouble.”
“As you know, Pro-Life Pigeon League policy is that we avoid the big city feeders entirely, since we cannot rule out new poisons for which you’ve not yet given us the antidote. But, well,” Florence’s mind flashed with the recent saga of Wilhelm, and the film reel that was shuffling in her mind stopped with this card on deck: “Oh. We did get into an open trough in the southerly farmlands. It had been gone through by the chickens for the day, and we were quite hungry on a long homing flight.”
Livia met the single upturned eye. Quietly: “This is something you haven’t told me, dear. Was there anything else?”
Florence walked slowly over the letterpath. “You remember the one we lost.”
“Wilhelm.” Livia’s eyes were sharp, though her body continued its calm hum.
“That happened the same day. It hadn’t occurred to me when we gave you the report. Things were so scrambled, somehow I forgot to mention the food stop.” The wee creature loosed a shiver that shook through every last feather of her passeriform form. “Oh. Oh dear.”
The lady of the white headfluff spoke soothingly as she conjured shape and color on the wall. “Now, Florence. There is nothing amiss. We will track it through the dreamweave. It could be that Wilhelm had an allergic reaction to something in the food, yes. It could also be that the food itself was protein-laden enough to have caused the recent spike and subsequent blueing, and that Wilhelm’s death was elsewise caused. These things are not causal, however inextricably correllated. So we’ll take the shortest path: your intuition. Tell me, what was the exact thoughtform that had you all aflutter outside my window tonight?”
Florence’s nerves lurched and re-settled instantly upon being seen. Spotlit. Immediacy. Right. She had already tracked this one. She spelled it out: “The thoughtform and its corresponding anxiety sourced from the magazine article I happened to view earlier today.”
… and suddenly it clicked.
Scrambling wildly across the rubbery letterspill, Flo spilled her guts like a freshly potty-trained toddler finally arriving at grandma’s house after two hours of are-we-there-yet-ing.
“There is a human couple having their 24th baby! 24 babies! 24! That is insane! How will we ever survive on this planet? If every human made 24 more humans, can you imagine how quickly the ship would go down? They’re using the same tactic we are, trying to fertilize every single egg that passes!” [3] [4]
“Oh. Oh, my. Oh, my my,” Livia shed an authentic tear. It channeled in between her South-Southwest crowsfeet and disappeared below the desert rose of her cheekbone. She recognized the exact tone that lit the room with the Pigeon’s dismay, and it matched precisely with the feeling in her belly that had landed upon learning about the mystery food. This is how the greater body signals itself. Subtle to track properly, indeed, but infinitely trustworthy once removed from its identification matrix. Livia was by then a seasoned tracker devoted to the complete trust necessary for Mastery. She chanced a hypothesis: “Florence, have any of the laying flock noticed anything out of place in the days since losing Wilhelm?”
The bird paced thoughtfully. “Everyone’s laying with the same reliable vigor. Nothing new to report.”
“Of course. We wouldn’t know for another few weeks…”
“Know what? What do you sense?”
“Florence.” She leveled her tone and did her best to deliver only the message, no additives. “There are people who give the birds in their care a substance called a contraceptive. It renders all eggs laid sterile. I am concerned that there may have been something like this in the feed that you found that day.”
Even in the total immersion of Equanimity and Compassion with which Livia filled the room, the Pigeon nearly lost her wits and lunch all at once. She flapped like a Goose taking flight, cursed like a pack of Crows, careened all over the keyboard pumping out a stream of technogibberish, shitting on more than one dipthong.
Livia stood still, observing carefully and feeling with her friend.
Slowly, surely, the cacophany capable of being produced by a creature feeling drastically thwarted in carefully-laid plans did subside, step by step and flap by flap. Unphased, Livia chewed on another leaf, letting Florence regain her orientation and will to speak.
Speak she did. Nobly, with great reserve: “That is a dastardly, fiendish practice, surprising even for the sleepwalking mumblers that populate the human race.”
Livia nodded, unoffendable.
Florence continued: “And you mean to tell me that those responsible for non-consensually contracepting other species are meanwhile in cahoots with those who are hellbent on saddling the planet with 1200% MORE of their own species? Unthinkable. Maniacal. Preposterous.”
“Bonkers. But then, of course, those people don’t know they’re in cahoots, necessarily.”
Florence marched resolutely over the squares, “That is no better. In fact it’s worse. That means it’s an even less accessible reaction formation playing out in the collective body of humanity. If they were at least AWARE of their deranged plot, we could have some traction.”
Livia hawk-eyed her friend, not unkindly, but unwilling to look away. “Something is aware of it. We are not trifling with passing storms of individual awareness. We are tracking the messages through those storms, looking for the actual Heart of the Matter.” She watched her bird friend regain a measure of composure, an internal geo-locating to who what where and why she was in that moment. Orienting. Wonderful. Necessary. Self-aware. Livia continued, “As such, we notice the reaction formation as it occurs in our own consciousness, the only access portal we have to the Whole, and then we choose a non-complimentary response such that the message is routed cleanly to Center.”
The bird flapped out a shake that was the birdly equivalent of a cold shower. A nod to the elder. Presencing the potency of the information. Choosing its pathway.
“So then, if we are to make no enemies, especially when a lavish invitation to enmity is laid at our doorstep, we will need to get creative about our actions going forward.”
That was more like it. Florence’s head cleared yet another collection of cloudmatter, and she asked, “Yes, please. What is to be done?”
“Boundaries first. Make sure our own aims are undamaged. I will work on the antidote at once, distribute as soon as I know it is safe. Meanwhile, please monitor the laying birds and keep note of which eggs have been laid in the interim. We can track the efficacy this way, and we’ll know upon hatching time whether the food was dosed or not.”
Florence had her problem-solving hat back on, which she much preferred to her collective unconscious psychodrama processing hat. She asked with composure, “So as soon as we get the antidote, we’ll keep it in the diet indefinitely, yes?”
“I’ll ensure that it has no harmful side-effects, dearie. Yes, we will add it to the vitamedicine blend and you will never have to worry about such things again.”
The bird nodded sagely. “Good then.”
The ladies looked at one another for a moment, allowing the sparkling dreamdust to settle. The room seemed to breathe with them. The task at hand was made clear. Florence spoke first, “So then, the new information requires a sturdy threading of Compassion to be laced into the weave, does it not?”
Indeed. Livia drew onto the screen a birdlanguage expression of emphatic assent, all UV light and moving shapes. [5]
The bird paced a bit and found the words. “So the question is, what would possess a creature to act out the very problem they are simultaneously trying to fix in others?”
Even after all the years, Livia found herself sometimes surprised by the avian creature’s aptitude for utilizing the human languages’ singular best function: Naming. She sighed her appreciation. “Yes, that is the question, dear friend.”
The bird toddled thoughtfully over the lighted letters. “Well, it’s a branch of the same sourcecode we’ve identified already. The way the Shadow moves: projection and reflection. But the unwellness in the body of Humanity can turn that perfectly useful tool into a game of dodgeball.” Flo was getting her edge back, and with it her sense of humor. “How sad. Pitiful, really. Bowling would be classier, at least.”
“You are wise, Flo. Learned. Astute. Perceptive. Sadly, this hypocrisy you have discovered is just one of many. In their fear of demise, humans build panic rooms for themselves. And yet those very actions render them ever further from the safety they seek. And then further panic-numbed actions are deemed necessary. And the walls keep closing in.”
The bird felt a rush of adoration for the Benefactress in her empathic clarity, but this was no time for affectionate display. She was a colleague, not a pet. Chin up, then. Stay focused on the thread. Flo channeled her emotive rush into the threadweave, bobbing her head furiously to respond, “But.. they built the panic room for EVERYONE, not just themselves! What are we supposed to do when their walls close in on US?”
Livia stared at the screen long and hard, with the concentration of a squeaker in its first year of alphabet recognition. Finally, she wrote:
“We do not always know what we do. Many people have given up on the world and are just getting by. That’s why we need messages. And messengers.”
The orange eye met the lavender one and there exchanged such a strength of motionless communication as to nearly lift the little one into the air without a flap. With a delicate feather-fluff, something like the refined fart of a librarian, Flo regained her ground and returned to the keyboard.
“So tell me: what distinguishes messages from distractions? What happens if people only pay attention to what they WANT to see, only hear what they WANT to hear?”
Livia took a breath. “Well, we must remember the Body of Earth is itself truly Whole. It is doing what we call ‘healing,’ as we simply track the frayed threads repairing themselves into the weave. You know, of course, there’s something known as a critical mass. And so we keep on doing our work, practicing the practice. Flooding the undercurrents. Knowing it takes time to show up on the surface.”
“Yes. So how, might we ask, does this one show up? And when? What shall we be looking for?” Florence was fielding a veritable birdstorm of internal processing as she continued the discourse, knowing that the information was being actively flown to the very center of her connection to the All-Bird. Worthy science, to continue the theatre of conversation. Worthy art, to play her part. Exhausting and exilhirating at once. A quick flight around the world and back.
“Well, any mission takes time and perseverance. But it also takes flexibility, adaptability. And this mission must be responsive to the world it takes place inside.” Livia was answering the underlying question, as the current had not volunteered specific answers to the creature’s inquiries. Still, it tuned the listening ear for the upcoming latenight labwork. She continued broadening her view of the field: “So we keep going, and we listen for response, we listen for reaction, we listen for repulsion. And we listen without attachment, without resistance. And then we drop more messages. This is the way the Air has taught me to communicate in the world of form,” she paused, wondering whether more words were required in the space of translation. No matter. “This is the way you Birds have taught me.”
Florence let her neck grow tall, considering all the human words and letting their meaning be held in the psychic space she shared with her Benefactress. They could cease talking this moment and all would be made clear between them. But then, their consented ethos asked them to learn and utilize one another’s languages, for the benefit of the fabric of consciousness. [6]
Lucky for Flo, she was one to keep the code. She kept quiet, letting language mix its ingredients. By the end of the storytelling, she would have a cauldron of understanding when she flew off to her familiars, still marinating the full hearty recognition of what this story meant for Squabland.
Livia shook her head slowly. “Humans have been in a dress-rehearsal for their own doom for thousands of years. Ever since…” Her eyes took in the smoke of a faraway fire, and she was silent. For many breaths.
The beak pecked gently at the keyboard. “Ever since what?”
Livia blinked back to the present. For a moment, she met the flare of an old speciesist debate about whether it was necessary to instruct a Pigeon in the history of conquest, confusion, and consent in the countries borne of the New Roman Empire. She took immediate note of the shadow function, shaking off the habit of separation, delving into the storytelling that clearly something somewhere wished would not be told.
“So, here’s the story: read what you will from it. There were once upon a time several widespread plagues in the world which devastated humankind: diseases that wiped out such a massive chunk of the population that you’d think we were going the way of the Passenger.”
Flo ruffled for a moment at the mention of her ancestry, letting the grief cough its electric current through her feathers. Livia watched the plumage settle before she went on.
“Germs, like spices, fabrics, and precious metals, traveled the trade routes with explorers and colonizers alike. The systems of government in Europe were feudal at the time, instating the Rule of Law through use of a heavy-tiered hierarchy with all the money, the churches, and the armed forces stacked at the top. Violent, ruthless invasions were commonplace. Kingdoms were continuously fighting for power over more people, lands, animals, and ideas. That last one will come into play in a minute here,” she glanced at Florence’s little face, briefly wondering what was going on inside the bird brain. Flo dismissed her silent inquiry with a regal nod, as if pardoning the lecture’s lack of bird-like efficiency. Livia checked herself, recognizing that whenever she found herself speaking a lot of words, it was something she needed to hear every bit as much as it was something she needed to say.
“So, in the face of the plagues, humans panicked. They scrambled. They cast about looking for anything they could pray for: answers, scapegoats, deliverance. Even their commanding top-down organization of power was impotent in the face of Nature; constant talk of the End Times pulled everything taut, thickening the tangle, entrancing the leaders. In a lot of places, the plague cut the population in half in a matter of decades.” Livia saw her bird friend shudder. Too close for comfort. The poor dear would have to fly for hours to get this all digested.
“Slowly, as people tried to make sense of the matter, they found some Very Good Reasons they could really sink their teeth into. In the aftermath of the worst population drop in recorded history, the manufacturers of the collusion between Church and State made a series of decrees which were supposed to re-populate the continent called Europa. One came from an ever-fashionable anti-Semitic bent that raged in colonized culture many times over, causing the persecution and deaths of millions upon millions of ‘Those People.’ Funny, for a society obsessed with curbing rampant de-population, that it seemed appropriate to kill whole factions of the population ‘Over There,’ simply on account of its Jewish faith, or Muslim faith, or Indigenous faiths of so very many ilks. These have been common mis-judgments in humankind: that there is something different about ‘Over There,’ and that killing the carriers of an idea will actually kill the idea.” Flo caught a sharp eye once more, one that stirred someplace deep and devoted. Livia went on:
“Another of the decrees, spat out by the slyly-named[7] Pope Innocent the Eighth, specifically ordered for the accusation and punishment of midwives for their knowledge and implementation of contraceptive methods. Worth noting: in the decree, they were not called ‘midwives,’ but ‘witches.’ And thus began a church-sanctioned, state-sponsored witch-hunt that justified the torture and murder of millions of people. Most of these people were herbal medicinalists who carried the knowledge of contraception and practiced women’s medicine. Some of these people were merely caught up with the ‘wrong’ crowds, those who openly enjoyed pleasures of the flesh, those who refused to conform, those who spoke without fear. Thus natural methods of contraception and family planning went by the wayside, not only because of the deaths of practitioners, but because of the superstitions planted in the culture, enforced by the Rule of Law. The ‘re-population’ decrees were simply a few examples of the extensive measures our kind has employed in order to avert fear of Extinction. The result, ironically, was a population bulge that made possible ambitious wars of conquest and expansion of empire. So,” Livia paused to release a breath big enough to feed a whole field of rue. “As you see, in the process of flailing to save ourselves, we humans destroy ourselves. In an attempt to have control, we kill of parts of ourselves and extinguish our connection with thousands of years’ worth of experience and collaboration in the divine practice of communicating with Nature. All for what? To get back to where the trouble started. Here we are, still: human idea-machines, trying madly to control Nature and avoid Apocalypse.”
Flo looked mesmerized. Human storytelling was syllabically dense and texturally mindboggling. The way the bird community told stories was much more compressed, much more rhythmic. She was used to the multi-layered meaning delivered in the tone of a single tweet [8]. Word-processing at lightning speeds inside, the bird toddled back and forth on her legs, wondering what letters to peck at. Luckily, Livia continued, saving her the trouble.
“So. You are correct in your estimation of my species. We have much to learn, and we have spent many generations severing the threads by which we can learn it.”
Flo took her time. She seemed to be pecking up a tough bit of grain, so focused and determined was her demeanor. Finally the screen showed her question, “What in the world are they dosing us with, then? How did contraceptives manage to get into the birdfeed?”
Livia stared at the words for a moment with a small smile. Oh yes, the matter at hand. “Well, my dear, we did manage to maintain contraceptive practices, despite the ongoing demonization. Birth control has been practiced the world over for as long as written records can reach. IUDs were fashioned first for camels & goats on long journeys. But humans are rather creative, so the list goes on. Diaphrams made from lemon halves or goat’s bladder, or cabbage and willow leaves, suppositories made from cocoa butter and quinine sulfate, acacia tree extract with honey, oil of cedar and lead ointment, frankincense and olive oil, peppermint oil and soft wool; physical endeavors like sneezing or holding the breath during ejaculation, coitus interruptus—”
“Coitus interruptus?” Flo interrupted. Cheeky bird.
“Yes, dear, thank you. Also post-coital herbal remedies of ginger, vitamin C, pennyroyal, blue cohosh, angelica, rue, and of course modern-day diaphragms, sponges, spermacides, condoms, and the quite popular pharmaceutical options like the Pill, the Patch, the Ring[9].”
Flo was standing stock still, aiming the laser beam of an orange eye at the white-feathered crone. Livia cut to the chase.
“So, you must wonder how this can be. How we have so many options for reducing our own population while it continues to swell to a never-before-seen magnitude. How we stoop to the great hypocrisy of trying to control populations of other species, without consent, while taking up more space than is our right. How we feel we should have any say whatsoever against the proliferation of another’s kind.”
Flo bobbed her head. Yes, Livia. The point. Let’s have it.
“Well. It’s simple, really. Our cultural structures have not yet outgrown the residual paranoia of the past. Colonization and its traumas have kept many people thinking we should try to control others. And so we haven’t finished re-writing the rules of the present to reflect a comprehension and respect for the divinity of individual consent of all beings in the inseparable wholeness of collective consciousness.”
Simple.
Really.
At that, the storyweave reached its maximum threadcount for the moment. Both human and bird recognized it immediately. Florence took two hops toward the window, which flung itself open in that moment. Livia nodded and threw the colorshapesounds of resounding gratitude upon the wall as her friend took off into the night.
Well. That was it, then. There was much work to tend. The Communiputor politely offered a warm mug of rooty tea, unconcealed from the cupboard closest to Livia. She smiled at the scent of it, accepted with a squeeze of appreciation upon the hanging vine, and made her way back into the lab for a good night of learning.
1. Useful perspective upgrade: “Pigeon FOV is around 340-degrees horizontal and about the same 135-vertical degrees as humans, but their vertical field is even more asymmetrically oriented toward the ground.” For further reading, here’s a door.
2. This was all Art, a theatrical spectacle for the frontal lobe, of course; the accuracy of instantaneous comprehension known in english as “ESP” was their primary mode of communication. However, in compassion to the eukaryote bodily code upgrades, and therefore as an offering to the temple of the flesh, they slowed it down like this so as to be more readily metabolized by others. Pay it forward, like. Encode it into the Stone, keep it safe for Later.
3. Quiverfull. In case you’re not in the know: it’s rather Quivery.
4. Meanwhile, in Birdland… there be tides to turn.
5. It’s respectful to sometimes bow to another’s superior language formations. “The Inuit have a word for it…” and suchlike.
6. A quickview of the lightning storm of immediacy grokking in the mind of the Pigeon known as Flo: The english language is so cumbersome and unnecessary, and yet, once developing a basic facility with it, one can truly appreciate its simple precision and artistry. Storytelling has its place. There is kindness beneath the business of words, however saddled with with a strange type of seeking that the rest of the animal world finds curious and slightly overbearing. What are you seeking? we would like to ask. It’s already right there. Always. Everywhere. You can’t actually escape what you are seeking. Stop seeking, and there you have it. But the aeons-deep code of conduct between us (even though the humans have generally been trashing such codes for centuries) keeps the rest of animalia from stating the obvious. Let them find their way.
7. I’d say Obvious Troll is obvious.
8. Ah, the learning curve of How To Properly Tweet. So steep. Keep working on it, bipeds. Protip: never tweet in all caps. Such a thing is no longer a tweet but a squawk, and it ought to be moved to a Squawker app, for organizational purposes at the very least.