Author's note: Looking back, I'm not crazy about the idea of an ostrich ranch. I hope you'll see my point anyway.

Birds of a Feather

Hesitantly, I cradled and outstretched my arms. I had held puppies and kittens before; googling in adoration. I have held baby humans, too—but they are a bit too gooey for my taste. This time, it was new to me. This was a strange conglomeration—part juniper bush, part rubber glove, part Erector set —prickly, clammy, disjointed. It craned its long neck and rested its head along my upper arm. It blinked its marble-sized eyes up at me with a befuddled look that seemed to say, “Are you my mother?” Then the two-day-old baby ostrich drifted off to sleep.

It seemed as though god itself was right there in my arms; wrapped in a bundle that was at once awkward to hold, hard to understand, and impossible to let go of.

Walking through the ostrich ranch, I was led to the chick runs that housed the younger ones. Within weeks these, knee-high, jurassic creatures with leopard-spotted necks would grow into giant birds with Carol Channing eyes. They snapped their toothless beaks at my forearm like locking vice grips, and ran; twirling like ballerinas. “Fantasia” was not far off. One chick, in an early attempt to dance, tangled his legs and collapsed to the ground, his bewildered eyes staring blankly as the rest of the herd stampeded over him. He caught up with them in no time.

The story of the Ugly Duckling sprang to mind. Think how much better the ending would have been, had the baby swan not grown into something so superficial as a bunch of snowy feathers and an Audrey Hepburn neckline. What if he had turned into an ostrich? What if he had grown to jump, dance and twirl; to flap his wings in awkward glee? What if he would run with a herd of others just as gawky—in spontaneous, sporadic directions that no one really understood?

 

Now that’s a happy ending.