Yes, it is Monday afternoon, but not your ordinary Monday afternoon.
This is the appointed day and time that all of Ornithology Under the Sun had been ominously anticipating with great foreboding and some thinly veiled anger. Questions abounded, rancor and suspicion prevailed under a facade of collegiality.
As the procession ascended to the locked and sealed grand steel door of the upper room, which would be their aviary for an untold length of time, or at the least, until it became critical to replace the newspaper on the floor.
The space was tastefully designed to be semi-grand, suitable for such occasions as this one today. The forest green walls were quite high meeting a spectacle or frescoed ceiling blackened by a depiction of the final scene from Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” There was even an ever so realistic representation in the northeast corner of Tippy Hedron in state of shock and awe.
One by one the cardinals approached the conference table and took their assumed perches. There was much chirping, screeching, and clatter until the entrance of Super Card occurred. As he ordered silence he recognized Herr Cardinal on his left. He brought up the matter that all of these birds hadn’t had enough time to get familiar with each other and how that could color the selection of the new Supreme White Cardinal, you know, the one with the largest top knot and blackest feet--as if all of them hadn’t been preening for this moment ever since “Its Supremest” had resigned and flown the coop, so to say.
Then there was a lengthy discussion about modernizing the office allowing genderization of the highest perch to others, the brightest colored cardinals. This matter reached fever pitch when the U.K. Cardinal brought it to the groups’ attention of what a besmirchment the Scot Cardinal had made of his office. And should the possibility of other-than-male cardinals fly to the exalted throne, we wouldn’t have to concern ourselves with big cardinals fooling around with fledgling red birds.
The astounding thought that a non-male Cardinal could get elected sent the birdy-conclave into total standstill. Then Super Card reminded the males that they were no longer in the majority inasmuch as some of them were somewhat diversified in their mating habits and that this college already included five or six discriminating non male cardinals. End of subject!
A knock, or should I say, a secret peck on the Great Steel Door announced the semi-cardinals arrival to install the traditional birds’ nest under a newly drilled ceiling hole. Upon the election of the new S.W.C. (Supreme White Cardinal) the ancient custom designating the completion of its selection was signaled by “one if by land and two if by sea.” Oops! Wrong story. The signal actually is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” A special Black Forest Cuckoo flew in for the procedure.
As the hour of decision drew nigh, anguish was rampant among the cardinals. The newspaper on the floor was almost indiscernible. Something had to happen and suddenly it did.
The black bird-obscured ceiling fresco split open to reveal a large white wing guiding a beautiful white pink-eyed dove into the room. It fluttered and glided above the cardinals’ top knots, from one to another. Then as plain as the beak on your face it lighted on the shoulder, or to be anatomically correct, the right wing of the one cardinal in the room with the greatest degree of understanding when it came to matters of cardinal-gender and wisdom.
Here was the new and revolutionary S.W.C. (Supreme White Cardinal) that would lead all of birddom into an enlightened era of “Birds of a Feather All Flock Together.”
© 10 March 2013
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