Art by Norma Jean Zahner
You’ve heard of a murder of crows. If there were a flock of cuckoos, they’d be called an asylum. Great. Like we need flying rubber ramadas.
The cuckoo nomenclature inspired One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962–for those unfamiliar. The book was made into a movie starring Jack Nicholson, released in 1975. It won a plethora of awards. Worth a look.
The ‘60s/70s were a time America was swimming in cray-cray soup, a dish in which we still slosh about. In tribute to Kesey’s brilliant treatment of individualistic principles, here is a brief new version of an old fable:
An asylum of cuckoos flew into town. Granted, cuckoos are usually solitary beasts, but a very powerful cuckoo had a very big following. The leader was tricky, seductive, yet charming. Satan at his best.
He told his followers to lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. Nesting parents would do all the dirty work for them. Further, the cuckoo fledgling would knock all the other babies out of the nest so he’d get all the goodies.
Why didn’t parents recognize the invader and his danger?
They weren’t that educated. Plus, they were complacent to hang on to what they had. Yet, Mrs. Warbler cried to Mr. Warbler, “We’ve lost all out babes except this very big one. He must take after your family.”
“More like your Aunt Brassy.”
“Hmpf. Well, Aunt B. does sing with the opera–and she does have a very large diaphragm.”
I hate to refer to birdbrain here, but Mother Nature plugged birds into caring for what they are stuck-with without stopping to think about alternatives. That’s when a shifty cuckoo sneaks in to undermine the system.
The moral of this cuckoo story: Be mindful of whom you let run the asylum. You might get plucked.
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