SPEAKING BIRD POORLY

From one of my all-time favorite books, "God and Mr. Gomez" by Jack Smith:





"No agua?"  I said. "Por las flores?"  It was an extraordinary effort; a whole sentence, almost, conjured up from high school Spanish. I soon realized it had been a mistake. There is no use speaking Spanish unless you have the capacity for going on with it. Otherwise you simply give a false impression of felicity in the language, and set off a response that is rapid and utterly incomprehensible.

Both of the workmen loosed cascades of amiable Spanish, none of which I understood explicitly, but whose burden was obviously that, "Yes, there in no water."

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This morning I made the same mistake, but in bird, not Spanish.

Now, I don't know very much about birds. I can correctly identify a bird as a bird around 80% of the time (the other 20% it's actually a bat). but I have no idea as to its breed, family, near-relations or country club memberships. Sometimes they are blue, some have yellow underbellies, some are big (in particular the hawks that follow my little border collie mix, eyeing her as their next possible meal), some are tiny.

And birds seem to have a huge variety of calls - but I can't tell if they are mating calls, normal conversation, or their version of the CNN Morning Headlines.

But this morning, I thought I would attempt to talk to them.

Ha.

I can't whistle very well following jaw-surgery back in the 80's, but I thought I did an adequate job of reproducing the shrill little whistler I hear almost every morning when I go back to feed the horses.

But it was met with stunned silence.

I tried it again - maybe I had said sometime very rude accidentally ("Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!") 

And that obviously was NOT the correct action.

Then, as Mr. Smith mentioned in the opening paragraph, there is no use in speaking a language you don't understand - you simply unleash a torrent of incomprehensible gibberish.


So I can't tell you what the birds replied - but it sounded suspiciously like

"We're knights of the Round Table, we dance whene'er we're able. We do routines and chorus scenes with footwork impec-cable, We dine well here in Camelot, we eat ham and jam and Spam a lot. / We're knights of the Round Table, our shows are for-mi-dable. But many times we're given rhymes that are quite un-sing-able, We're opera mad in Camelot, we sing from the diaphragm a lot. / In war we're tough and able, Quite in-de-fa-ti-gable. Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable / It's a busy life in Camelot. /I have to push the pram a lot.



Well, at least I got you to smile, didn't I?!