Birds
Birds Aren't Real: The Definitive Proof
If ever there was an idea custom-made for a Jay Leno monologue, this was it: Birds aren’t real. Isn’t that insane? Whatever happened to rational thinking? I happen to sympathize with this idea of birds being fake, though, perhaps because of what happened during my childhood: the death of my father. I vividly remember the day that he perished. We lived in a very rural part of America, Southern Texas to be precise, so it should come as no surprise that my family were farmers, and I was homeschooled. As such, I would often during lessons (which were essentially just one-on-one conversations with my mother) look outside, bored and unwilling to learn about more old dead people or fractions, and just stare at my father laboring away in the fields, thinking to myself: “wha‘ I wouldn’ give to git out ‘der an’ work alongside me ol’ man”.
Yet one fateful day, that thought would vanish from my mind completely, and that was the day the birds came. In the ecosystem that we lived in, birds were not commonly seen, and as such, whenever we did see one it always drew our attention. Yet that day when my father died, I saw not one bird, not two birds, but a horde of birds, blocking out the sky like a wave of darkness, and as they descended upon my father I could only stare, dumbfounded, as my father valiantly cracked open the hoe he had been working with, drawing a blaster from the hidden chamber within his tool (I would later learn that the blaster in the hoe was actually a 3d printed DL-18 from “Star Wars” and to this day it alludes me as to how my father got his hands on one), as he shouted with a voice that could shatter rocks and create tides “Come an’ get it ‘ya lousy bunch of gover’ment pigs!”. Those were the last words my father spoke, and when the cloud of birds had ascended, only bones remained. On his gravestone, we engraved his final words but had to change it, since two days later the president came to the local Texas cemetery. Coincidence? UNLIKELY.
That event irrevocably changed the course of my life, as it instilled a lifelong fear in me that if I did not pay attention to my studies, a flock of birds would come from the sky and devour my next living family member. As a result of this motivation, my grades skyrocketed. Despite being homeschooled, I was easily admitted into Harvard (although the admissions office had questions as to why I put “birds” as my reason for wanting to get into Harvard). After years of studying, I eventually became a learned scholar and a renowned professor in the field of ornithology. Since then, I have had a decreased fear of birds descending from the sky and tearing the flesh and life from bones, not unlike how toddlers assault packs of batteries. Yet often my mind occasionally wanders back to the last words my father ever spoke: “Come an’ get it ‘ya lousy bunch of gover’ment pigs!”. It must have been insanity speaking right? I mean, how could the government control birds? As a scientist, I strictly abide by the idea that claims must be supported by evidence, and that fantastical theories are more often than not full of 100% USDA-certified and FDA-approved bologna. Yet I am also a staunch believer in empiricism. Nothing else explains those birds’ behavior… furthermore, it was odd that I was unable to find any information about what type of bird that was, even in the Harvard library and on the internet. Every bird image I come across, every description I read, none of them are exactly the breed of aviator animal I came across all those years ago. It’s for that reason that I, Professor Avis Podex Van Helsing Smith, famous ornithologist, state that: birds aren’t real. And as such, my life’s work is meaningless. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
