Ways to Ruin my Day
So I hadn’t had much sleep last night and I’m running late to work, but that’s ok, nothing unusual. I get in, check my email, and there’s a few forwards from one of my bosses. Again, nothing unusual. One warns about card skimmers at ATMs,all very useful stuff, and the other seems to be something about birds so I click on it.
There’s a picture of a jet engine with holes all through it. A few more shots of planes with big holes. This should have been enough information to tell me to CLOSE THE DAMN EMAIL. But I had to look, didn’t I? I skimmed through a few more, each getting more bloody and brutal with cormorants smashed against windscreens and blood coming through control panels.
Then I saw the owl, and I just lost it.
Now, I’m a bird person. Some people are cat people, some like dogs, some like reptiles or fish or dolphins or giraffes or elephants. Me, I like all animals but I especially like birds. I love birds. I get birds, birds make more sense to me than most people, and I really have a soft spot for parrots, corvids . . . and owls.
I love owls. I even have one tattooed on my leg. And seeing one gorgeous big, dark-grey owl contorted and embedded in a jet engine was really not how I wanted to start my day.
Please keep your owls in a non-smashed-up condition
I lost it. I don’t even know why. I’m not even the emotional type. To make things worse, I was on reception so every time someone came past my desk they’d ask if I was ok and I’d lose it again (being a redhead, I don’t hide crying very well). It took me most of the morning to compose myself and I’ve felt horrible all day, like my body was filled with a venom I couldn’t discharge and all I wanted was a nice, big G&T and a lie down. My supervisor went and had a quiet word to the boss over it (i.e., Molly doesn’t want to see pictures of smashed up animals, thanks), and I know he didn’t mean any harm (we’ve got a few ex-RAF/RAAF members in the office who’d be interested in aviation stuff) but still . . . that poor owl . . .
(disclaimer – I’m not squeamish. I’ve got a strong stomach and a sound head on me. I’ve worked in areas dealing with deceased people and seen (and smelt) all sorts of things, but damn it, I can’t stand seeing animals come to harm. And yes, I did snorgle my budgies when I got home, and yes, it did help.)
Baby Whale needs TLC
Photo: Nick Moir, from The Age website
Anyone who knows me well – especially anyone who knew me as a little kid – knows I love whales and dolphins to bits. I had whale and dolphin books, posters, Greenpeace membership at age seven, even a cassette of whale calls I would listen to and imitate when I was a little tacker. I was completely cetacean mad. So when I read about this today, my heart absolutely broke. Just look at the little guy! Poor thing . . . and the hardest part? Knowing there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it. It’s not like finding a baby possum or something and taking it to the wildlife rescue people. You can’t just hand-raise a baby Humpback and release it in the wild again. You can’t just come up with some whale-formula and make a surrogate mother out of a sock puppet like you can with baby birds. And you know what else does me in? Knowing how distressed he must be. I can just imagine how his little whaley brain must be thinking and feeling and it really gets to me.
But I probably empathise with animals *way* too much . . .
Anyway, on another note, I came across a really cool game today which it turns out I really suck at. You watch a bunch of people reading a section of a poem and you have to guess where their accent is from. I always thought I was fairly good with accents, but I only got 28 points and some of them are really tricky. I’m interested to see how everyone else goes.
