{Note: If this is your first visit to this blog, we highly recommend that you read the “About” page first, which will provide you with information that will prove to be very useful in understanding the terminological idiosyncrasies being utilized. In addition, after some introductory remarks, you will find a Chronological Archive of all the posts to date, which will allow you to read everything in the proper order, as intended.}

Our hands recently replaced the bird feeders that adorn the back railing of our house’s elevated deck. Our hands has the effrontery to presume that we’re pleased with this development, that the promotion of a bird buffet is something we are, or should be, invested in. To borrow from the parlance of the hands younger generations: “Okay, Boomer.  Whatever . . .”

We’ve never understood the appeal of birds to hands, all that defensive “Save the songbirds from the predatory humans!” malarkey. Entry 7 of this blog goes on at some  length concerning hands hypocrisy on this issue, how despite their avowed love for birds, hands are responsible for more bird deaths than any other factor. After puzzling over this paradox for a short time (humans never have to be puzzled for any significant length of time, given our immense intellectual capabilities), we finally understood the source of this disconnect. Because hands don’t understand the languages of birds, they actually believe that birds are singing. And given how enamored hands are of music in general, they easily transfer that love to creatures they think are as musically inclined as themselves.

Our poor, dear hands, sorry to disabuse you of this particular fantasy, but you are completely mistaken. The closest comparison between what birds are (always!) doing and what hands sometimes do would be the most invective-filled rap battle imaginable.* Virtually every sound out of any bird’s beak is an insult. Or they’re bragging about how insulting they’re being. And that’s it. Over and over and over and over, the same insults repeated and repeated and repeated, with no variation. So, for example, the finches that fuss with each other around our hands’ new bird feeders are essentially saying: “I’m great! You suck! I’m great! You suck!” repeated ad infinitum, with “you” meaning every other creature in existence that is not a finch. Is it any wonder that humans take such delight in snuffing out such annoyances? And let us reiterate the main point: it’s not just finches: ALL birds spend ALL their time, every day of their stunted sorry little lives chanting insults at the rest of the world. That’s all they do.

Imagine choosing the half-dozen most insulting things your current President has said and then broadcasting them, on every available medium, repeatedly . . . forever. Nothing different, ever: just the same six insults over and over for hours at a time. And again: forever. That’s what it’s like to be human and having to endure the infuriating cacophony of birds day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century . . . even the dullest of hands should be able to manage an inkling of understanding of our frustration. It can be absolutely maddening; only the long and practiced equanimity of humanity in the face of the world’s insanity has allowed us to maintain the unperturbed presence for which we are so justly famous.

And speaking of your President and his addiction to Twitter. . . . We’re fairly certain that the inventors of Twitter had no conception of how accurate the name of their repulsive social media application really was, but it is almost frightening how analogous the two means of “communication” have become. The average Tweet is only marginally more bearable than an actual bird tweet, if only because there is a lot less of that infernal repetition. But as an unintentional homage to the exasperating idiocy of birds, Twitter is hard to beat.

If we know our audience for this post, and we think we do, by now a fair number of readers are engaging their engines of denial because hands find it impossible to believe that all creatures don’t automatically and unabashedly adore them. Let us be clear: birds hate you. Birds hate humans, too (with good reason, we admit, given our desire to exercise some Killing Limb practice [Entry 6] on their obnoxious feathered carcasses). Birds hate all creatures, even other birds. And the smarter the bird, the more they loathe you. Humans took some delight in the serendipitous acronym created to describe the recent pandemic, COVID, because it so closely resembles “corvid,” the species of bird that includes crows, ravens, jays, magpies, and the like. For birds, corvids are very smart, and every ounce of their intelligence boils with a burning abhorrence for hands whom they blame for anything and everything that irks them, which is pretty much anything and everything. Corvids spend their whole lives being vexed and irritated; and like humans, they curse the universe for not giving them hands. That soft, hairless apes were given hands but corvids were not is inexplicable to them, and this perpetual grudge colors their whole existence. Unlike humans, corvids have not figured out how to best exploit hands’ hands for their own benefit. They’re smart, but not that smart.

Hands are dense, difficult-to-train creatures, as we’ve pointed out innumerable times, but apparently on some level they recognize that birds are not their friends. For instance, the name mockingbird they’ve bestowed on that creature is absolutely accurate: mockingbirds are mocking the world by repeating the noxious noise of other birds. But given that all bird noise mostly insults hands, the mockingbird is, therefore, mostly mocking hands. Mockingbirds are the equivalent of an oafish hands who has somehow managed to learn how to say “Screw you” (but only that phrase) in a dozen languages.

And then there are parrots, and other birds that can mimic hands speech. When a hands describes somehands as “parroting” something, it is meant as an insult, is it not? As such, is it so hard to comprehend that when a parrot is doing the “parroting” they are blatantly insulting hands? It shouldn’t be, but there are hands that have convinced themselves that parrots are actually fond of the hands that keep them in cages. Nothing could be further from the truth. Parrots, like all other birds, despise hands. The mourning period parrots supposedly experience when their “owner” dies has nothing to do with any affection the parrots had for their captors; it simply reflects the distress of losing one’s meal ticket, and the uncertainty that is sure to follow their hands’ demise. “Who will feed me now?” is a sentiment far removed from “I’m so sad at the passing of old so-and-so.”

We realize that by setting hands straight about birds and birdsongs, we have probably raised some questions in some hands’ minds concerning their relationships with other creatures, particularly dogs, in which hands have invested an inordinate amount of attention of all kinds, emotional, financial, and so forth. We also realize that this post has exceeded the attention span of 99% of all potential hands readers, so we’re resigned to finally, maybe, writing an entry on dogs. Some day. Maybe. But here’s a small teaser to hold you over until then: as far as dogs are concerned, hands are the ultimate cheap date.

*After some consideration, we’ve decided that we have been grossly unfair to rap battles, as well as to anyhands who has ever participated in a rap battle. Even the worst rap battle in the history of rap battles could not approach the absolute monotonous stupidity of the noises birds make and that hands have mistaken for songs. We apologize to rap battlers everywhere for our careless comparison. (And if any reader is unaware of how momentous an apology from a human to any hands is, then you clearly have not been paying close attention to this blog.)