Story Time

Grown ups, out with you. Go balance your checkbooks or something. This is for the children.

Okay, gather 'round kiddies, and step in to Ol' Uncle Bloggy's Story Yurt. Have a seat, shut your pie holes and listen up. We've got a special story for you today. It's called the Unpleasant Cow and The Self Righteous Birds, unless I can come up with a better name along the way.

Once upon a time there lived back in old Ireland, a cow. This was miserable old cow. This was a cow who was so unpleasant, so ill tempered, that the other cows found themselves wishing that the man from the local Burger King would pay a call to her field. This was a cow who disliked the world, and the world was happy to return the favor.

Not only that, but this rotten cow wasn’t content to be miserable on her own. She had to drag everybody else along with her. Consequently, as you might have guessed, clever child that you are, this dreadful cow, who was equally dreadfully named Ugnophia Mae, had not a friend in the world. She passed her days in the middle of her muddy field all alone, grumbling and complaining and being generally horrid to any poor creature who happened along.

One day, as Ugnophia Mae sat there, muttering discontentedly about how bright and sunny and warm the afternoon was, for she preferred constant gloom and cold drizzle, three small birds flew into her field. These cheeky little starlings, which is what kind of bird they were, walked right up to the sour old cow, something that every local bird had learned long ago not to do, if a bird valued his or her life.

“What do ye want, then?” grumbled the cow. “And where do three birds as wee as yourselves find the colossal nerve to land in me field uninvited?” The birds stared at the belligerent bovine for a moment and then the middle one spoke in a high voice. “Sure isn’t it only the farmer’s field and not yours anyway, you unpleasant old cow and can’t we land wherever we want to? And besides, we’ve come here on a mission. You see, we’re no ordinary birds. We’re metaphors, like, representing Irish Fest Past, Present and Yet To Come.”

“I thought you were Starlings” said the cow.

“Metaphors isn’t a kind of bird, ye eejit” chirped the bird on the left. “It means we represent something without actually being that something. I mean, obviously I’m not an entire Irish Fest of the past, now am I?”

“I don’t care if you’re bald eagles all the way from America, I’ll ask you one more time before I run the lot of ye through with my horn, what are you doing here?”

“We’re here to show you the error of your cranky ways, old cow. To show you that the world is full of music and joy and that instead of sitting here day after day complaining and grumbling and dropping great cow pies, you should be dancing and singing and enjoying yourself, like we do at Irish Fest!”said the bird on the right. Or maybe the it was the middle one. Hard to say, since all starlings look alike, even to other starlings.

“The error of me ways, is it?” said the cow. “This should be good for a laugh. Proceed. I’ve got all day”

“And with that, the bird on the left, I think it was, suddenly flew right up to the top of the cow’s head and began to speak.

And what did the little Starling say?

Chapter two, here tomorrow. Now go clean your rooms and give the computer back to your parents so they can resume losing your inheritance in on-line poker games.