Viewers at Neatorama are advised by Miss Cellania that this brief video is a public service announcement, so I was alert to the possibility, but didn't figure out the message until the 3:40 mark. I'm reposting it not so much for the message as for the artwork, which I find very appealing - especially the styling of the willow tree by the pond.
I used to walk the dog by a lake that was covered in ducks. We moved which is why it's "used to". He's an asshole but he never chased ducks or other birds around the lake. Pigeon in his back yard? Meat-seeking missile. Swans and geese on water - he paid some interest. Pigeons ducking(!) around the feet of people at the water's edge? Couldn't care less.
ReplyDeleteIf you go to the same place two or three times a week you see the same people again and again. There was father/son pair that brought carrier bags full of bread to feed the various birds. The father was old, the son was special needs and early middle-aged. The pair of them probably did this every day.
I watched them, in passing, a few times and they tore the bread into little chunks and scattered it across the water. No conversations I ever heard though I was literally just passing by.
I knew they shouldn't be feeding bread to the birds. I knew it can kill birds, like an all-rabbit diet will kill people. I never said word one to them. Even when the park around the lake started putting down high-tech rat killing pods full of poison that only the rats could get at. Rats that had been living the high life from free bread and probably dead ducks.
I suppose a few ducks might have lived a better life if I'd said something, but when it's an old man and his forty-something son, giggling like a child every time the ducks squabble over bread? I'm glad I didn't say something. Which is better than my usual, "I wish I didn't say anything".