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epitome of incomprehensibility
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A stressful time yesterday, and yet from tragedy arose a funny phrase (and an example of the importance of hyphens in hyphenated modifiers, lest the bird eat the hypocrite. But anyway.)
Alas for small_animals: last afternoon, when I was hanging the clothes out, the puppy was nosing at something in the black raspberry patch and then drawing back. Amused, I thought he was trying to eat a raspberry but was repelled by the tiny thorns.
Then he ran after something and pounced. I saw a small bird in his mouth. It got away, he pawed at it, and he snapped it up again. The birds overhead flew around , screeching. "No, Shiloh!" I shouted. "Drop it!" But he turned his head away and growled like he did when he had a sock.
I ran inside. "Mom! Mom! Shiloh killed a baby bird and the other birds are freaking out!" I sounded like a child.
"Oh, no," she said. She was lying on the couch.
I returned outside and saw that Shiloh had dropped it. This time I was able to grab his leash and pull him away. But the bird was alive, breathing. I took the dog inside. Dad had just returned from getting take-out at Amir and I told him what had happened. "Can't we call the bird people?" Again, childish.
"I don't think so."
I went out with water in a small blue cup. There it was, on the grass alone. The birds that had shrieked weren't near it. No solidarity now? It was probably an immature robin. At least one of the shrieking birds had been a robin, and the little one's chest was orangey-pink (spotted too, as far as I remember). I
I couldn't see it bleeding, but its wings appeared to be bent too high. A feather was missing. What struck me was its mouth, gasping, and its eyes, sometimes opening but more often closed in a wincing expression. In pain, it seemed.
I tried humming to comfort it. I reached out and stroked its side, the top of its claw. I don't know if that was my compassionate side or my cruel one - it seems that the urge to protect is double-sided sometimes, that one could have a sense of superiority over the disadvantaged. "I can touch the robin NOW." Maybe that's just a problem with me, like how at 8 or 9 I tried to keep a caterpillar in a terrarium of my own making, it died, and I was horrified. No, I'm not intentionally cruel to animals, but I'd been exercising my power over another being unfairly, and my urge to care for it was actually destructive.
Dad came out to call me to supper and said if I left it alone, maybe the other birds would come. The water, which I hadn't done anything with, fearing it would hurt the bird more? I poured a bit on a leaf next to it.
Supper time. I was glad I'd chosen the falafel sandwich over the chicken one, given what had happened. "Otherwise," I said, "I'd be a bird-eating hypocrite."
Mom looked at her chicken sandwich.
"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean you."
Then Dad and I got ready to take the dog for a walk, putting its leash on and filling its waterbottle.
I went out to check on the bird first. At first I couldn't see it, but there it was. Motionless. Dead.
And I was upset. It had suffered. It had been in pain - I saw its face close up. And the dog wouldn't even have eaten it. Too many sharp parts, I guessed, which is why he wouldn't normally eat the raspberries off the bush. So it was just the instinct to chase after something moving. An accident. I didn't want to blame Shiloh, but it seemed unfair, and I snapped at him when he nibbled at my hand when we were starting off, even though I didn't treat him much differently when we got going.
"Good dog," giving him a treat for walking.
"Even though he tortures poor innocent birds," Dad joked.
And then we dissected two jokes. At least, I told them and Dad dissected them. "You wouldn't let me finish this one earlier," I said. "At the supper table two days ago. You thought I was trying to annoy you." (I had been; I don't remember why, but I also felt compelled to tell the joke and was upset he didn't let me.) "I was just thinking of it. Can I say it now?"
"The context is neutral. I'm indifferent."
...
You've probably heard one like it: Two men are at the 9/11 memorial. The first says he lost his father in the attacks. The second one says, "Oh! Me too. At least he died saying a prayer."
The first one, "What prayer?"
The second, "Allahu Akbar!"
...
I paused. I said how I wasn't against "morbid humour" in general, but this one, in retrospect, felt anti-Muslim.
Dad, flatly, "Oh, it's EXTREMELY islamophobic."
"Extremely...?" The adverb took me aback. "I get that 'Allahu Akbar' only means 'God is great,' like by itself it shouldn't be something bad, but the IDEA is that this guy is one of the hijackers..."
"I get it, I get it. But it makes one suppose all Muslims are terrorists."
"It doesn't literally say that," I defended, even though I'd probably argue for the other side if given half a chance. "Pah, it's an old template too. Like with the American and the German."
I paused to give Shiloh a treat. "The American accuses the German of having a Nazi grandfather. The German, 'How dare you say that! He died in a concentration camp.' The American, 'Oh! Sorry.' The German, 'Yes, he got drunk and fell off the guard tower.' ...You really haven't heard that one before?"
Dad said no.
"It isn't saying all Germans are Nazis, is it?"
"No...more like it's antisemitic."
"Antisemitic! How?"
We were in the lane on the way to Westwood_Park.
"Well, making light of the whole Nazi era? Also, many Jewish prisoners were forced to guard others..."
"It wasn't about that."
"And many for example non-Jewish Germans were forced into jobs like that...and others might not have agreed with the Nazi party, but they needed the money."
We were passing the parking lot. I felt uncomfortable feeling sorry for anyone who would voluntarily guard a concentration camp, and then annoyed with myself for getting emotional about the analysis of a cliché joke. I told Dad he was making it too real; it was just an imaginary scenario. I returned to the case of the bird, which Dad had buried with a shovel before we'd left.
But then it was time for me to grab the leash so I could run across the field with the dog. Dad walks much faster than me, but he can't run for as long as I can. Then it was up Westwood hill and down. Conversation shifted to the pink clouds from the sunset.
Thoughts can't literally be outrun, but physical activity can provide a sometimes-needed distraction. I'll watch Shiloh more carefully in the backyard, or at least say I will (today the land is doused in rain).
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