754: Spark Bird
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Not long go, I went on the woods in organ with this bird expert. No, a stricker. Looking at birds every day, he goes up for least hour.

Often it's a lot more on trails around his house that he and his parents called back when he was a kid. And I never been burning. I had no idea how much a bird watching, actually just listening for the birds. When we sit out the morning, still foggy already.

I can hear some birds calling now. So there's a spot toki .

right calling.

Just bind me. That was a california, il waking up. 乳 就 起来 软 了。

That was the sound of a steller's j imitating a red tailed hawk.

We, you know the birds well enough, you can tell when a bird is imitating another bird badly.

Yeah, it's not a real red tail talk still as jasa just kind of bullies in general. And they imitate red tail fox, as far as I can tell, just to terrorize other little birds in the .

forest does IT work. I don't know. Honestly, what's weird about this is, if no, I can tell that it's not a red tail hawk and he's not even a bird. Can other birds tell if they can, why would star j keep doing IT answer that question. No one tells me about how, a couple years ago, he, about this powerful microphone, a parabolical microphone that capture bird sounds from a great distance.

The first bird I ever aimed at was a steller day sitting up on a branch.

so we turned on his recorder but don't have found and waited for the maxim noise.

And I realized I was sitting up there with its be closed, singing a very quiet whisper song to itself that only itself could have possibly heard, because I was so quiet that just blew my mind. I have never listened to birds the same sense, so I think they do make noises just for their own sake. A lot of the time.

Going out burning with no is going out with somebody who is instantly knowledgable, able about birds. He's written five books about their behavior. Poor the world seeing six thousand of the new eleven thousand existing birds species in just one year in two and fifteen.

So he knows a lot, but is also still completely excited about birds can get enough. You don't know the story. He goes to attack the government months studying penguins. And sometimes as he gives tours to visitors of the penguin colonies, at first he says.

they love IT. They go into the colony, they see the baby penguins, which are super cute. And then like day five, or people get up in the morning in the lake, where are we are going to go today? And you say we're going to a penguin colony.

And there's like this look that i've learned to recognize. It's like i've just spent eight other penguin colonies in the past four days. How is this one going to be any different? But for me, I have never felt that. Look, in my whole life, I ve never got pending out.

He happily goes back to the same colony with the same woods around his house every single day. No one says this. Endless birds began in sort of typical ways. In fifth grade, he first noticed birds for rio when his teacher section copped bird feeder to the classroom window, and he could stare with the birds through the classroom inches away, he started breaking the field guide, looking for birds on his own during the local burden club, everybody else in the club, by the way, within the sixty seventies and eighties, he was like twelve. The one kid is energetic birdy duga houser in person, no, actually does have kind of a neo Patrick k harassing b but the thing says that changed him from that kind of leisure time burder into somebody who organized his entire life around IT happened because of turkey ventures. When we take you a pack of them, when he was sixteen, I saw this episode of A T V show called the life of birds, where a David edinburgh goes into a tinted dad and rain forest.

and he has this smelly old piece of steak in his hand. And then he baris the steak under the lead letter on the forest floor.

and the let me and then .

backs off, and then they cut. And then forty five minutes later, this turkey vote comes ceiling down through the canopy of that forest and flies unhearing ly right to the spot where the stick is and dig IT up, move the leaves aside and gets the me IT.

Seems almost unbelievable.

When I saw that on the life of birds as a high school, I just immediately had one dog, which was, I got, i'd try this at home. That is like the best bird feeding idea i've ever seen in my life.

IT seemed incredible to him that he might be able to wear these birds that you usually see him so far away, turkey before shy hard to get near, and he might be able to see them close up. Any thought you give me out? Got one bird to show up with some old piece of stake. Maybe he would improve his ards. IT was a big with something bigger.

Imagine how many turkey vulture I could attract with like a dead deer. There are so many dear here, and we're organ on the side of the highways in three ways. I can now go out and find a road kill, bring a whole car, get home and see how many turkey vulture we can attract. But IT was kind of hard to find a road kill. As IT turned out, IT took me like a month to track one down IT.

Now, the way to put that last sentence, if you are in a sixteen year old, very eager to see turkey voters up close, and only took a month to find a dear circus, no, a wrested, heavy blooded, gaseous yellow jacket covered futured smelling deer into the trunk of his vovo.

Dan got home, put the deer in a wheelbarrow wheel, IT out to this very spot where we're standing in this pasture and dumped IT.

So it's like, great. Here we're we're standing.

This is the spady chase.

At this point in our world world, we are standing with an ice shot of house city grew up in, but not too close. The company is overground. That was first White oks around its edge here.

I thought this would be a good spot because you can see IT from the sky. IT has a multiple approach pads from the air, so they will be as attracted as possible to this dear car .

is he was dark, so he went to bed. No idea if this was going to work. Gets up the next morning.

And there were turkey voters everywhere. They were sitting on these streets right here. They were voters sitting on the roof.

Our house, like ten of them, lined up on our roof, their vulture circling overhead. They were probably thirty or forty turkey butchers hanging around the art. And when I woke up and realized that this is happen, I was so happy.

I were rushed out here, and i'd set up a little camellias tarp next to the dear car. Where was so the type was just kind of in this wet grass. So if I come over here, I was honored down right about here. So if I kind of get down, I was sitting under a tarp with a hole in IT in my camera lens sticking out.

This may be ten feet from the deer. He waited.

And then finally I was like, magic. The first one came down. And once one came down, they all started just piloting down. IT wasn't like.

what do you management? That was going to be chaos. Like a pack of lions ripping .

into a zebra. What unfolded .

was very polite.

They were just delicately walking around IT, standing on top of IT and starting to pick at IT. gingerly. IT wasn't like a brute force kind of thing at all, and they were very well behaved.

I thought there was almost like a pecking order involved. They knew which birds we're going to eat first, and they've heard to IT. So I very orderly, IT was an orderly same of turkey vultures beating .

their breakfast. Where did they start?

I thought I was so cool. So the softish parts of the deer, that's where the turkey waters would start sticking their heads into. They didn't like I was expecting them to terror.

Big hole in the side and just go at IT. But that's not what happened. And all they actually started by packing the eyes out.

I guess those are the softish part of the deer. So they went for the eye balls. And then they went in and very carefully ate the guns out of the deer, like around its teeth.

They take, go with the soft parts because they don't have very strong feet or beaks. Instead, I talky for you, just kind of sticks its head up inside. The body I had is bold and read with no feathers.

which is handy for sticking inside of carcasses and not getting your fathers mess up.

The turkey voters next started eating around the wound on the deer's shoulder from where get hit on the highway, took turns eating around there till they got a big enough opening to get access to the chest and gods and everything else. No, I would go off in the morning's new tennis camp and other kids stuff going back to the start for hours and hours.

I don't know how many hours I spent out here that week, but IT was full afternoons pretty much every day, all week long. So I got to see the whole process. At the beginning, the deer carcass was relatively fresh, and then gradually IT was stripped away.

And by, you know, day five or day six, they are starting to disassemble the skeleton that was pretty much picked clean. IT was like being drawn into another world that exists in this world that we are very seldom a part of. Being so close to these birds that don't Normally allow us to get that close to them was like passing through some kind of force, feel there's something in emerging on their side of the divide and feeling that yeah.

and their world is not the .

same as ours. No, and IT is existed for much longer than ours has. I mean, humanity is not that old. Turkey voters have been around for quite a lot longer than we have. Man, when you stare into the eyeball of a turkey voter and IT brings its third island.

birds have that is .

just unsettling. They are strange, strange animals. They just have this weird, very reptilian web.

Before this, of course, he seen lot of birds, but he was like checking them off the list. This one in that one that he read about the field guide, he never just stared a one group of birds for so long and watched how they related to each other or what they did.

Turkey voters are what I would call my Spark bird for a burger. A Spark bird is the one you see usually in some kind of unexpected situation that grabbed you in a way that you haven't been ground before by birds and turns you on to a wave length that haven't been turned on to before in the bird world.

like people talk about what you are Sparkle .

n birds when we get together and go out on build trips. Yeah, I really live to say, oh yeah, what was your Spark bird? That's a cool and what was your Spark bird? And you ask just about any burden out there what their Spark bird is.

And no, probably have an answer for you. For me that week, watching these voters being in their world just gripped me. That changed my life.

That we gain the pasture by this house is basically turned into his entire life, thanks to the Spark birds. None of this here, the program had ever heard that for his Spark board before we talk to know a and we thought there must be other situations where bird arrives and changes everything. And we went looking for stories like that.

We found a bunch and whole fuck of them and all kinds of settings. And that is what we are very pleased to bring you today from wb. Easy chicago is this american life, amErica glass. 因为 了。

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This american live today shows a rerun at one, don't chicken out. So when they about the birds in the show, the Spark birds is that they don't know how consequent they are. No, what I mean, they just got about their day packing IT worms and seeds, unaware of the lives that transforming.

I'm very sure that that's true of the bird in this first story, though we were unable to confirm that independently with the bird. One of the people in the story is carmon male to back to thirteen in thousand nine hundred and sixty, growing up on tony island in new ork. One day he met this boy on the beach. Even the day when you talk about on the words, uses are gorgeous, beautiful.

He had a just the cute face i've ever seen demps. You know, he just, he just through me.

he wonder, as as they did IT back in the sixties, girls, we're constantly swing back down over the beetles and of us and what not? Anyway, SHE and the guy talk for ten or fifteen minutes. He drove off.

Three years later, she's at a social club and a random neighbor od, far from coming island. There's music playing, people dancing, and the boy walks in fate. His ring leather jacket, like back hair, teaches did back then, carman points out to her friend .

and SHE looks over and because oh my god, is gorgeous .

time and goes up to him. The guy guys were drink. They talked for a long time out.

She's sixteen. Her name is Bobby. She's excited. But SHE is too ashamed of the apartment where he goes.

Mom, they have been picked up there. He was run down, he said, under the elevated train tracks. So SHE hasn't picher her sisters s place. Her mom is furious .

about this. He was, you're not proud of of what we have here. I worked my ass off on my life and you're barred.

I try to tell you that you just want to to make a good first impression, says, don't worry, he's going to have i'm come to the house when he picked her up for the second day.

So that day was the saturday, and I told my mom that he's coming again to pick me up and he put this little face on, so what do you want me to do? You know, put up the flags. So he said, tell me about this boy what's going on with him.

So I said, well, is the italian guy lives in bench in hers. I said, he happens to be science. An and SHE stopped, SHE said, no and I said, we didn't mean, no, no, you are not going out with any czech boys.

My mom is from from naples, so he had married my dad, who was sicilian. And he he turned out to be a real dead beat of a man. He he deserved to her when he was pregnant to me for the baby cigar, actually.

So so when he heard that he was a salian SHE thought that life was repeating itself and the thoughts that came into her mind, we're like, you know, he's gona desert you and and I said, please, you're jumping the gun here. It's a second day. Don't work. I don't care. I don't so I said, mom.

please tell me, tells you just go out and do the shopping or I clean the house um is fine SHE goes out, goes back to a while later with a large cardboard box.

And in this box is a chicken.

The chicken, of course, is the Spark bird in the story. No one going to change everything for carmon.

And it's scratching that box all over the place. And I looked at IT, I said, what is that? And he goes, it's a chicken and I said, what you're going to do with IT?

I'm gonna kill IT and then eat IT. And I said, you never killed the thing in your life. What he's talking about, you can have this thing here now he's gonna be here and you mean and you've got that life.

Chicken is going na think with farmers is I just went off and because, oh, don't be ridiculous. I I put the the chicken in the bathroom. Now the bathroom was right next to the kitchen, so you close the door and you hear everything, everything in that Better.

And so do you figure, like all this is her revenge on me like he thought, I was a shame to bring up to the house. And so here's what she's doing. She's brought live chicken in.

Oh yeah, I I said that. I said, is you getting back at me for something? And what are you doing? what? Because I don't be ridiculous.

He said, just go, go, go finish getting dressed and worries in the bathroom. He won't hear a sound. You a precious Bobby.

okay. Before we going to further, I just want to say the rest of the story is about whether this chicken actually does get killed and eaten for food or not. And I know that there are people out there who find the killing of chickens for food to be offensive and cruel. The people in this story, like so many people, do not feel that way. Right back crime in a mom.

Well, as we are arguing, we hear footsteps coming in down to all way and then there's a knock on the door. So um SHE said her head open the door very calmly and I was like, so such an assurance about her like he had .

a plan walks Bobby well dressed hand has always play cost carman's mom, mrs. Negative o call me ida SHE says and courts him into the kitchen SHE offers him a drink. You want to drink, go to me. Boy was nineteen, but it's a weird move with the boy who has can be driving your daughter come and wanders what she's .

up to so he sits down and he gives him a drink of scotch. And SHE asked some questions, like, where you from what you do now in the meantime, that chicken is scratching its way out of the box in the bathroom. And he was so kind, never said a word.

He heard that you could see IT on his face because he'd look around like, where's the sound coming from? H, my god, I just wanted to die. And every time the chicken would crash at the box, I would call for I, we got to go, you know, we got to go, and my mom would take just a minute.

SHE had this way of saying, just a minute, just a minute. Hold your horses, bob. Come on, finish. You drink up at another one.

Okay, just a weird right now about carmon's mom, ida, and which is doing here, ida has been described to me as kind of scrappy and sharp with IT and willful. Somebody had to figure out how to make her way in the world, and if he wanted to convince to do something, apparently he was very hard to resist.

In the summer, you would pick up extra money as a barker on coney island, urging passes by to come in and buy tickets for the wax museum sheet, where go paying factory jobs, our life on a feet all day, during which he was thirteen. When her parents pulled out to school to go to work for the family and caring dad, after for the babysitter, SHE lost of her friends. Her family turns back on her. Ja, defend for herself, survive.

And SHE was a very sensitive woman. SHE would wear her heart on .

her sleeve, very protective of caron, who was a baby of the family with this boy .

in her kitchen. SHE just saw sylvian. That's all he saw and he had a plan. SHE was like a little crazy as a fox. And then SHE said, well, I have to ask Bobby something.

Tell me, Bobby, did you ever kill a chicken? And he looks around, he looks at me, and he. Why is there a problem? And he said, no, no problem.

He said, just wanna know if you ever killed a chicken and so he's looks at her. Just know he lied. He's sure.

Yeah, I killed a chicken. You know, SHE got, oh, I knew you did he got Bobby? Listen, do me a favor, honey.

I have this chicken in the bathroom. Would you do me a big favor? Can you kill IT before you leave? Well, you could .

have heard .

a pin drop in that room. IT was silent and I said, mom would, no, i'm screaming and i'm Carrying on now you can do this is old dress, is SHE could don't worry about that. I'll get him in April and then SHE gribble the chicken and he puts the April on him.

He goes in the bathroom and he puts the boxer with the chicken in on the table, and SHE says here, so he opens the box up and the chickens running around the box, and he closes the flap right away. He goes, I don't know if I can do this and because you said you could, do you disappoint me now? Barbi I you please, you promise.

And he's like looking at me and i'm looking at him. And all of a sudden I started to say, will he do this? He closes the flaps and he said, SHE have a knife. Okay, i'm going to spare you the .

details of how he killed the chicken without getting blood on his White band shared to anything else. But IT was swift and surprisingly deft for somebody who .

never killed a chicken in his life. And I was like, in shock. I I couldn't move.

And my mother was dancing all over the kitchen. You are a jam. I think i'm gonna love you.

You come back on sunday and i'm going to make you the best chicken in the capital you ever ate in your life. SHE gave him a child to wipe his hand. SHE was like, treating him like some god of sorts.

I mean, he was like in heaven. And SHE looked at me and he gave me this big wing. And you thugs up sign, kind of like, it's sake.

You have a winner here. SHE goes, go here, go out now and have a ball. He said, you come back on sunday and he said, I think so, I yeah, I guess. And and and we left and did not say a world to each other.

You and he didn't say we're .

to each other about not a word. A word was not spoken. We SAT in the car, and I just stared out, he stared out, and we started to laugh.

And that that .

was the end of the conversation. Never again was .

IT mentioned.

What happened was we continued to go out and see each other, and fifty six years later, we're still married. This demand of my dreams were still married after fifty six years.

Garment says, asking him to kill the chicken. That was a test.

Any other guy would have said, you crazy lady, i'm not gonna kill this chicken SHE believed that that would have been his response. But he, he just guess, was in love with me. And just said, I got a delage for her, you know? Oh.

that's what the test proved. IT proved his feelings about you.

Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, totally. He killed something for me. SHE knew that if he wasn't the guy for me, he would have never done this.

I never really looked at at that way. I looked at IT like my manhood was being questioned. This courses, the man in question, Bobby.

The Bobby was a nickname as he got order switched using his given name season. You know, like, did I have the stones to kill a chicken? I was nineteen.

When you're nineteen, you're insecure and SHE sort of like through a test, which I thought maybe was some primitive ritual that came from the village that, you know, they were from naples, you know, from Serena. Maybe that's how they did IT inside. My god, primitive, don't say primitive.

I don't want to get letter from people from string. yeah. Anyway, I didn't want to be embarrassed in front of I don't want common to think of me is not being manly enough to do something like that yeah. But at that point, I don't think I did at that of love.

Yeah I mean, it's funny because because I think I think they both took IT at least her mom took IT as a sign of like, oh, you really like her and it's finding to think that you got that wrong. Well, I did like her. I mean, I was crazy you about IT, but I didn't I didn't say i'm going to do this for common IT was just a second data after all. Would you've done that .

for any girl's mom?

I can think of any other the court mom would .

ever asked me to that .

he was feel very widely and a good person. And I loved that. I loved the dearly.

In common is sixteen, and a mom put of this plan just horrified. But now SHE is two decades older than a was that day in one thousand nine hundred and sixty three. And this happen. He has kids and grandkids our own. And SHE sees her mom action that day very .

differently. I D her for doing that. I could cry, warning that night, night back.

I the the bravery of her to do something like that. I I can imagine. Her doing anything else. Actually, SHE wasn't a talker.

SHE wouldn't set down with him and said, listen, you know, I want you to respect my job. Shi wasn't going to say anything like that. SHE was gone to give him a test.

And in that test, even though he was wrong about whether sebastian killed that bird out of love for carmon, if you do mom's bigger conclusion, there was going to be a reliable man for carmon. There was going to stick around and be there for carmon. Have a century later, it's probably safe to say think about that part, right?

Coming up the wearest bird species in the world so rare that only one family massage sets has ever spotted them until right now even knows about them that in a minute from chicago, ob a radio when our program continues.

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American life amErica glass today show Spark bird. We have stories of Spark birds with the birds who get IT all started for somebody. Birds that make you see things differently today shows a rerun. And if you just running in, we began our program today with no a stricker, who is the author of the thing with feathers and other book and bird behavior, somebody whose Spark bird was the turkey voucher.

And what if our producers, coe, one and night spent hours trumping around the woods with him and caswell, or again, which of hours of actually doing the thing that today show is about grading to see things differently through birds? And I just wanted play, you go tomorrow this because so much of what, no I told us along the way was new to me. And Chloe, like prince ince na, was telling us how late one night he was home and he heard this bird sound he'd never heard before.

I don't even know, was like, and I came running out here with my flashlight because I was dark, because I had no idea what I was in, tracked down. And IT was a flegere street howel sitting on a branch.

And it's just like I hadn't learned they had how to make the proper streets out noise.

Yeah, birds bible, just like human babies do. Scientists will call IT sub song and have these other technical terms for IT. But it's just birds learning how to sound like birds.

Birds babbled like human babies do. I didn't know allestree never think about the fact that you've in the middle of a whole world of bird. I don't notice them. I don't hear them singing, but of course, no I can. I stop themselves from hearing them and instantly recognizing that that's a pacific grand, that's a chest nut back chicken or whenever and he doesn't just hear the bird sounds when he's walking around outside.

Becoming a burger ruins hollywood movies for you forever. Because whatever bird sounds are in the background, in the sound track, whether they're just natural or whether they dub them in, even they are never the birds that would be in the place that the movie is set at the season. That is said and and IT drives s mean that, I mean, how hard would I be to put the proper birds down .

in there like with a movie that this happened you and well.

just yesterday I saw the movie Spencer, the new lady die movie. They had rEdwing blackbirds in the background. This supposed to be really like europe in the U.

K. somewhere. REdwing blackbirds don't live in europe. That's a whole content away from where they would actually live. They had seven days in the background and all kinds in north american species.

So obviously, this movie was filmed by north americans, who are dubbing in north american birds into a completely wrong background, and just the links to which they go to get all the historical details in period pieces accurate. The sheep in the headlight that no one is ever gonna know honestly when you watch the movie. And yet the bird downs are all over the map, and there are so many birds out there like me who know what they're listening to. That's not unusual.

This, I guess, would be the downside of having a boot up in your eyes to something about the world that most people don't notice. IT would be, have to fix this. No, he says there were archives with most bird sounds.

Maybe sound editors. No one would love to hook you up job monagan, he says, because the problem is the world doesn't care about burgers. Hollywood knows that they continue to show up, but they are factual, inaccurate movies and stream their error ridden television shows because where else they onna go when they need to watch something, it's indoors and not wild life and fathered.

Back to a club is bird that can get no love for me. So we now turn to a Spark bird that started a political fight. I fight that has lasted for a very long time concerning one states, official state. Bird, no matter when me tells the tale.

the thing about an official state bird is that IT just really doesn't matter. I say that with no intended, disrespected birders across the nation, some of my best friends zer ders. But think about IT, what was the last time you SAT down and truly considered the cissy tale fly catcher, who is the avian embodiment of the state of oklahoman? exactly.

It's absurd. A state bird has nothing to do with the states. GDP, for example, IT doesn't tell us how happy the children are. IT makes no one's life materially Better.

Or was, and yet in florida, the debate about which flying animal deserves the title of official state bird has been ongoing for more than two decades. The state bird means nothing. But somehow in florida, it's come to me in a hell of a lot.

Florida was actually one of the first states to designated state bird back in thousand and twenty seven, and was probably a simple choice. The northern mocking bird is a good bird. As bird go, IT d likes to saying IT has an incredible talent for mimicry, and with its great coLoring, it's cute.

He is the thing though the northern mockingbird is the official build of another four states. Besides lordi, it's actually the third most popular state bird behind the northern cardinal and the western medlock. After seventy two years, some people have had enough of this read thing.

State bird, enter the Spark bird of this story. The scrub j the florida scrub j is the only bird on the planet that is found only in florida. It's a study looking bird with a dull blue head and wings.

It's unclear exactly why the late republican rep. How would fetch with such a champion for this club, but in one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine, he cosponsored a bill for IT to become the state bird. Maybe IT was the fact that fetch represented brevard county, which used to have the highest number of scrub joys in the state.

But I think he just liked the bird as he put IT. It's got good family values. It's kind, and it's a bird that likes people. Scb just do something called CoOperative breeding, which means that each nest has an adult pair.

But IT also has help us, usually the older siblings of the newest j babies, to help feed the Young and defend territory very different in force. His opinion from the mockingbird, the mockingbird. A lot of people love that soccer, he said, but it's pretty me.

There's nothing human beings cannot make about themselves, even birds. And the fight over the florida state bird very quickly became loaded with familiar political troops on the side of the status quo. The side of the incumbent mockingbird was one of florida s.

Most famous senior marian hammer hammer is a long time lobby's with the national rifle association and the architect of florida stand your ground law. And SHE is no fun of the florida scrub. In her committee testimony, hama dismissed the bird as a thaves scrounger in the strongest possible terms.

They eat the eggs of other birds, SHE said. That's robbery and murder. And in response to the scrub jays alleged friendly ess, exemplified by the weight eats out of human hands, SHE had a rebuttal, begging for food isn't sweet, it's lazy and it's a welfare mentality.

The response from the other side was just as harsh democrat rep. Mark pfob called the mockingbird and obnoxious, pleasurable zing and promiscuous bully. State rep.

Fetch and the scrub jay had the auto ban society on their side, and they also had a chunk of florida citizens, school children. Thousands of them signed the petition in support of the scrub. j.

Hama had a hunch about who was behind these passionate school children. He suggested they had been influenced by environmentalists trying to secure extra protections for the scrub. j.

It's adults hiding behind impressionable children, he said. If they get IT on the endanged list, you can kiss your property eyes goodbye. This has begun as an argument about something that means nothing.

But now I had become an argument about the biggest things. IT would have been needed if the camps were strictly a republican versus democrat. But bird choice in party affiliation didn't always a line.

The choice of state bird became a proxy ference dum about what traits floridians should find admirable, depending on which side you were on. The mockingbird was either a standing for rugged, talented individualism, or IT was a rock as bully. And the scrub j seen through one lands as nursing family values and sweet enough. How around with humans somehow also became the poster child for a reliance on big government and its handouts?

I'm very familiar with irrational and hyperbolic debates about regional forum in my own home country, the U. K. We are not above turning benie animal behavior into weird politicking. There has long been appeal battle wage between the indigenous and endangered red squirrel by some accounts of noble and scrappy creature, and the Grace girl, a larger invasive american into lopa who has ideas well above its station. IT is brought fourth, every type of nativist narrative you can imagine in a debate in the house of laws in two thousand six, lady sota of avena.

He likes the red girl to quiet, well behaved people who do not make a nuisance or an exhibition of themselves or crimes, and so do not get themselves into the papers in the walkway. Gray squirl to do. When I was a university, I swear I read tabloid stories that basically compared gray girls to american G.

S. During an afterworld war, two over feed, over sexed and over here. Since two thousand and eight, prince Charles has been the patron of the red squirl survival trust. In two thousand seventeen, the prince backed the government plan to sterilize Grace girls using the teller as that's a step beyond what floridians are doing. They've yet to read ise any spreads or condemns in their fights to choose a state bird, a state bird whose announcement will make no one's life worse or Better.

Bit out a woodman SHE fears no birds and respects only one, the crown.

At three we need to talk about birdling. Okay, I just want to say word about what I find interesting about this next story.

Um I think every couple there are the things that you share and talk about with each other and you know then other things you don't share so much, but each couple has the kind of invent or discover the territory of stuff that they haven't come in and when they meet up and the more stuff in the territory, probably the Better because the more chances you have to connect them, for course, and all that. The couple in this story, they had their stuff. They were, you know, even raising kids together, which is obvious, huge thing like that. But as the kids got older, the couple invented this whole other original common ground for themselves. Also, this bird shann call explained.

before I get into what the stories about, I just want to say that the couple in question, Peter and his wife matty, are Normal people. You must great .

to meet you. How are you? Thank you. Their house in .

north hamp ton and massachusets is so Normal. It's beige, four bedrooms upstairs, one for each kid. Peter and matti crammed themselves into the attic for a long time.

There are blended family. Peter came to the marriage with two sons. Matter, has a son and a daughter. All of them are grown doing well now, just the parents at home. Matty works as a lawyer recently, one of big case through the innocence project.

So I do trial work, and I do a.

so Peter is a professional musician toward europe ane bucker arrangements on a special guitar.

Hey, design artist, all my life, you know, I think i'm really grateful for that.

Like and it's for more than ten years now, a sizable number of their conversations with each other concern a family of imaginary birds with whom they live, six birds who do not exist, and yet each have names and distinct personalities, successes and failures. Most of them have corresponding stepped animals associated with. Peter imai might spend more time talking about these birds than about anything.

In reality, the birds lives resemble those of great school children. They attend bird academy right there on the bird bus, and they're kind of little messes, always accidentally spilling things on themselves and throwing parties at the house when Peter and that you're away. Yet they somehow also meddled in the olympics and recorded a grammy award winning record. Here's matty.

It's odd. I mean, I know it's odd upon reflection because it's like this business teen story line now it's every day and it's like wove and all through the day.

And for example, if I was doing something at work like a difficult meeting with a client at a jail or something, then afterwards, when I would call Peter to say, you know, I mom my way home or whatever, then he would say, how, how the birds like, how did they do? And then I would say, terrible. Usually, usually the birds do terribly.

So the birds had a tantrum in the car with my colleague. The birds were rude to the investigator like that. Sort of how IT rises a lot is asking how the words managed. What we were managing. Sort of like when Peter went to .

main to visit his sunshine ter, he had just fixed up an old boat that he was sAiling and living on, which Peters really proud of him .

for having accomplished. And of course, when i'm on the phone with matty calling her from up there, it's like, well, the birds didn't really like the boat. The boat is really small. It's really the photos is going to be like the boat on succession, on the TV shot succession.

the nice yet, which, by the way, is not how Peter felt about the boat. The views and opinions of the birds do not necessarily reflect those of Peter and mai. Sometimes they do, but it's not that simple.

It's more like they're this this messy greek chorus that I was has to be accounted foreign factor into almost every experience. It's like a very elaborate running joke. They'd like seeing what each other that gonna come up with next, poke fun at each other via .

the birds pushing, pull and go. Now the birds don't do that. The birds do this.

You, what are you talking about? You know, the bird's hate skating. You know, it's like, you know, way we have our birds on ice.

The birds have an annual event called bird fast.

which is always cancelled at the last minute.

At the last minute, IT will turn out they didn't really have a permit. They hadn't really spoken to beyond this manager. The throwing .

out ideas in coming to a consensus is a lot of how they built a bird world, for instance. So the birds are really in the milk shakes. Their bird mobiles are outfitted with special shake machines. But they filed a lawsuit against shake shack after one of them got his head father's caught in a ceiling fan.

which is really ashame. Because the birds love shake shack there.

They're not banned from shake check.

They are not, and but they must have showered them on the whole shake shack experience.

I I don't think so. Any they got a ton of money and they still can get shakes there.

okay.

Yeah.

it's important to say, too, this is the first time Peter and matty have ever talked about the birds in front of anyone other than their kids. And Peter therapy once or twice in passing. They've never mentioned the birds to a single soul until now.

It's just too out there, they told me, and too hard to explain, which means this is also the first time they've had to answer any questions about the birds. They've never examined any of this, even in private. So when I asked them something like why they do IT or what they get out of IT, they really had to puzzle together those answers in real time. As I SAT with them.

i'm not trying to like, yeah, i'm not trying to sell IT. You know i'm saying i'm just reporting IT that .

is happening here.

And the whole thing with the birds, IT, isn't just frivolous. It's actually been helpful in the family in some ways and hurtful to which i'll get to. But just to say, IT began.

So the birds first entered their lives about a dozen years ago, when maddie daughter, Peter, step daughter, ever but mai, a little stuff t toy monster. Technically, IT was something called in ugly, all but to mati. IT looks like a bird. Eva was only about two thousand years old at the time.

and I do think that was the first thing that he had ever bought for me. So IT was a very sweet gift, and I just loved you so much. And then I gave IT this silly name, bird.

So bird was the Spark bird, the bird that Sparked the capital b. birds. Matty started bringing bird everywhere. Birdy wrote in the car with her. He took on on vacation.

Keeter would ideally tell him to the other side of the bed, and matter would be like, hey, careful. And this hadn't done on matter until we talked about IT. But this was around the same time that her custody arrangement with her x husband was changing. Used to be the kids will never be away from her for more than three days at a time. But then they switched to one week on, one week off.

And in the beginning, the week that I did not have them felt like an eternity. I could, you know, was a chAllenge. I think IT was fair, and I think that was the right thing to do. But that was a period that I was missing my children. So I think that may have been why I got super attached even to the bird that he gave me.

and very quickly, bird group personality of his own adventurous, irresponsible macy valen. He d take our credit ds in Peter in may's names, uh, neglecting file less taxes for five years. But matty would dote on him .

nonetheless. At first I found bird really annoying SHE just got so exaggerated ated about how like precious he was and how and I would just feel like, okay right you know like please and then somewhere I crossed some line and moved over into um you know well he doesn't you know he didn't do a thing. Help do the dishes or something you know like participating in IT and then sh'd .

be like what he had to work .

on his presentation for school tomorrow, like the .

psychologist and marriage expert, john gottman talks about how couples are always sending each other these little requests for attention. subtle. Like, wow, would you look at that sunset? Sometimes the other partner just rugs, but in some couples, the more contented ones, the partner responds enthusiastically, like, oh, wow, yeah.

It's beautiful. I think the birds are a request like that. Sometimes the birds will ever swoop in and help them communicate something that's difficult to express like this one time.

He's fine now, but Peter was deadly ill. He had a bacteria infection in his spine, and they were driving back from a doctor's appointment where they gotten some bad news. The mood in the car was dire, and after saying nothing for a long time, Peter goes up, we have to stop at the mall. The birds want to go to the mall.

I mean, what else you going to say? I remembered as the best way for me to say something like, don't worry about me. I mean, you can, you can tell her not to worry, but but you can talk about the birds. What about the birds? They want to go to the mall.

And then here's the way in which the birds have not been so great for the family. Again, there are four kids, and they each had somewhat different to bird world. The oldest, torsten thought I was kind of funny, and he left for college anyway.

Not long after I started, hank was indifferent, accepted. IT is some kind of code that his parents used to communicate. Chester, the very Youngest of the four, thought IT was annoying and not funny. And then there was ever who again gave matty her mother the doll in the first place, and who was the most aggrieved.

I was definitely jealous.

This is ever. She's twenty five now.

I was jealous of bird. I don't know if I felt forgotten, but I was definitely jealous.

Now, as the Youngest of matty's two kids, evil was used to being the baby, doted on, showered with affection. And suddenly he had a bear witness to this overwhelming overwinter guiza of praise and attention her mom gave bird in the other birds.

the theme that bothers me the most is like, if you say something about your life, and then the birds have their own think about their life. So that would be .

like if you .

got an a, the birds either got in a plus plus, or they got in f minus. But mom is still somehow, like more interested in their f minus than he is in your a, which James sir wasn't true. But that's just how IT felt at the time. So like that's really when the intense dislike tally began to build and .

build and build and build until sometimes that exploded.

I don't think I was clear enough that I wasn't kidding when I am saying that the birds thing bothers me. I'm not playing along with the bird universe word. Nobody likes the birds and they're sticky and annoying and they're fAiling at a classes and their teachers are reporting them. I really, really don't like IT like I couldn't say that or I wasn't saying IT, right? So I think that I was like IT always felt like I was playing along until I had a tantrum and I would scream at her that they're not real, which I think did hurt her feelings.

And looking back on IT now, eva says her mother was giving her an appropriate amount of attention, affection, praise, all of that. But back then, he really felt like he was in competition for IT. And after all, the birds didn't deserve IT because, you know, them not existing at all. Anyway, for the first couple of years, he was just bird, just the one bird and then this one fateful day ever took .

action i'd had enough and I stall him and I hit him between the box spring and the mattress of the bed that I slept on um and then I forgot that I did that. I, honest to goodness, forgot that I had done that.

I felt panic. I tore the house apart. I mean, I felt the panache that you feel if you have an indoor outdoor cat and they don't come home at night. I was so disappointed in myself that I had, you know, carelessly lost him.

which, of course, in eva's mind, confirmed all of her fears that metty loved birdy more. You got even more jealous. And then finally, Peter went out and bought another bird.

Exactly the same doll, same color, whole thing. But instead of telling matty, like here, honey, I know how much you missed that doll, so I bought you another one. He claimed to have found the original bird, which was just more willful.

Ll suspension of disbelief. Like, of course, bird isn't someone you can just go out and purchase at a store any old time. His unique Albert in a million, and that was good enough for mati felt a lot Better. But then a couple months after that, edy's doing a really thro cleaning of the house is in her daughter of his room, turns the mattress cover. You can see where .

this is going. SHE comes to me and she's like, look what i've found, you know and I was like, that's that's you're right. That's bird. And that's because all this, while his twin sister has been pretending to be him to make you feel Better while he was, he had to go out into the world and .

his twin sister being the newer, more plant cleaner.

one who had an amazing like this form. It's like, what is twelve night or something? It's just like kind of proud of that. Although i'm also wildered by IT and SHE just love that.

So that is how early debt was born.

Bird, lady t. Bird, least twin. And soon all the other birds join the flock to one of Peter sons gave matic adults. He called doctor bottle.

He looks a little like a robot and bet he's a bird and a doctor. He's received the nobel prize for medicine for having cured space rush ever .

gave me the insider scoop on doctor body.

He's also missing. I think that I had him, and I don't know.

wear herenton missing.

He's been missing for years. But if you ask mom, sh'll tell you .

he's on sthetic al. Next came hub letter or hub zi shean anal guano, a penguin studying to be a bird mobile mechanic.

He is like in the car, and we used as as a lumbar pillow.

And finally, there's one who is not embodied, no physical incorporation, what's ever stuff, ed or otherwise. So at this point, I was original goal to disappear birdless, so that matti wouldn't pay so much attention to him, could not have backfired more badly. Her parents conversations now involved exactly five hundred percent more birds than there had been. And to make matters worse, her older brother tor stein, when he was home, would occasionally get into the act, egging their mother on to keep telling bird stories.

And again, IT was like, there's no mal there. They thought I was just the same as any other teasing that we as a family did all the time, but I felt replaced like, you know and there's like there's no way that that could have been addressed because what are usually to even say after having yelled at them? I know the birds are fake, like, I hate you.

I hate you in your fake birds. They're not real. There's stuff to animals to then be like. But also, I do feel they are real and you're hurting my field.

Feel real.

They are real.

are real.

I mean, what is real other than what everyone around you says is real, right? I mean, there's snow like if everybody around you is talking about them, uh and they are having significant social, emotional, psychological impact on your life, like I don't see what's real than that ever says.

She's still not a fan of the birds these days, but in the last couple of years she's finally reached a little economy ity with them. The lots changed. She's older as a good job.

Not living at home anymore has helped. Plus, she's unpacked a lot of personal stuff that made her especially hypersensitive and insecure as a teenager. SHE leave me ask her mom from time to time how the birds are doing just as a way of connecting with her. He read me this text conversation SHE had with matty a couple of days before her interview something about the birds needing an attachment in their bird mobile to hold the dipping sauce for their french rise.

I said, birds need that. There's ranch all over the bird mobile. The steer colum can barely turn its due with honeymooners and then SHE said, exactly honeyman ster is the worst because that attracts fruit lies and I said, yes, the gear shift is all sweet and showered up also ranches diary in IT it's a total nightmare.

Um so that was like a totally Normal birth conversation. Totally entertaining, totally fun. I started .

IT and mattis met every part way too. She's been apologized for filling the house with so much birdlings ss, especially when he learned through this story, amazingly, that ever actively stolen in hit bird way back when I had plan to ask me about that thing ever said earlier about the birds being quote and quote, real was on my list of questions. But before even got to IT, SHE actually brought IT up first, told me he'd been worried I was gonna pose the r the real question we .

know so here I am like, it's an amazing that i'm a defense lawyer and then i'm asking myself the question I didn't want to be asked. I mean, i'm like, right, i'm putting them out.

But you .

know .

I can't say that they aren't real to me.

I can't .

shift off that. I won't shift off of that .

because what would happen if you did.

I mean, okay, what would happen, I think, would be a huge loss. I think that would be a huge loss.

The kind of loss you might feel when you have to stop playing your favorite sport is your body can't hack IT anymore. Or maybe the loss you feel when you finish watching all five seasons of your favorite show, except way, way more so, because this is their show, they created IT and constantly updated, and it's been going on since their real children were in middle school. IT gives them some of that feeling of being parents, I think, except without any of the worries and without having to watch the birds get any older or fly away.

Jco is one of the produces of our shell. Guess what .

are spoken to?

Know we're .

gonna live in the tree. Did I will be transformed?

Are gonna live in the trees?

We gonna live in a tree. I bring you the fat to see. M, I bring you milloy open you.

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Show just a minute next body.

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