The Rainbow Bee-Eater of Australia
Apologies to Wikipedia, from whom I have pirated text (in the brackets) and attributed to, well, you’ll see…To begin the presentation about the Rainbow Bee-Eater I shall begin by stating a joke. I expect spontaneous laughter to issue promptly forth from each of you at its completion, and I will be timing you for duration, intensity, and effect/affect. (You think I’m kidding).
The joke itself has nothing to do with the Bee-Eater, rambunctimonious be she/he, but in the spirit of the season, I expect you to tolerate that and be both suitably levitous and levitated - i.e. elevated - in body, mind, spirit, and expectation, not to mention carburetion and matricular eco-reforestation.
Ancient sources tell the ghastly story of a Pharaoh who was convinced that in order to find out which was the primal language of the human species, he should raise a child from birth in total isolation with no contact with speech at all. So he found a wayward infant - we are not told how the child was selected, to bring some compassion into the story I speculate that he was captured from Canaanites who were otherwise going to sacrifice the child to Moloch, “Make him pass through the fire,” in the parlance of the Hebrew Bible - and put the child into the desert with only the several-times-a-day company of a mute shepherd to feed the child (note I’m using gender-inclusive language by refusing to use a personal pronoun referring to gender, and “It” sounds well, so Stephen King…)
As soon as the child’s vocal mechanisms were suitably developed to produce articulate sound he rolled his eyes to heaven and declaimed in a startingly pure dialect of Punic - the ancient language of Carthage and Phoenicia and the (much later) native tongue of St. Augustine- “Tibet, you idiots, it was supposed to be Tibet. Not Egypt again. Jesus H. Christ.”
A Story of Igneous Simon the Rainbow Bee-Eater pt.1
Summers were hot down south but Simon loved this. There were all the bees he could eat, not to mention tasty wasps and grubs, and he could play with Sara all day long since the babies that year had grown up and flown into nearby meadows - now sun-baked with spiders scampering between cracks in the ground and scorpions curled up next to rocks as though wearing an “eat me” graphic, if Rainbow Bee Eaters knew what graphics were, which they presumably don’t.
This summer was different though, as it had been the last few years, though Simon had no memory of that or really anything before the previous few hours, except for a few hazy flashes of chicks and grubs, small tunnels he and Sara had dug into the turf, and a warm presence that tingled him beneath the feathers when he remembered that benevolence regurgitating bugs into his and his blind brothers’ and sisters’ tiny beaks in those early first hours and days of their existence.
Facts
<<Rainbow bee-eaters are brilliantly colored birds that grow to be 7 to 8 inches in length - hmmm like some bearded poets I know- including the elongated tail feathers. The upper back and wings are green in color, and the lower back and under-tail covers are bright blue. The undersides of the wings and primary flight feathers are red and tipped with black, and the tail is black to deep violet. The rainbow bee-eater’s two central tail feathers are longer than the other tail feathers, and are longer in the female rainbow bee-eaters than in the males. The crown of the head, the stomach and breast, and the throat are pale yellowish in color, and the rainbow bee-eater has a black bib and a black stripe through its red eye.>>
Abdhul Alhazred, from “What I had for dinner before entering the wasteland of the ghouls”, a hastily scribbled Syriac(!) addendum to the Necromonicon, found only in the archives of the Eastern Mennonite University Library.
The Story of Ingenious Simon the Rainbow Bee-Eater pt. 2
One day Simon awoke to find Sara gone from the small tunnel in the sod they shared as hearth and love-nest. Distressed he flew around the meadows - I know, this is the Australian Outback, not a lot of meadows per se, but let’s keep with the rhythm of the story - looking for her. This flight was observed by a fox, who, noting the brilliant rainbow colors of Simon’s feathers briefly considered scouring the meadow for Simon’s hovel and possible nestlings with an absent parent - Yum! - but decided against it. A flash of memory however, remained of the event of the over-flight and when the fox got back to his own den told it to her cubs as a story reminiscent of the flight of the Phoenix, but in Fox talk. Yes, I switched genders there. I’m trying to stay with the gender indeterminism. This time, in a serial manner. Yes, I’m flogging the dead metaphor like a horse, serially.
You may also be noting that in first part I called Simon Igneus, and in the second Ingenious. I promise you, there’s a reason for it. Crikey. You people are so picky. Remind me of a bunch of old testament scholars. (At this point, the one Old Testament Scholar in attendance - excuse me, Hebrew Bible, we’re trying to be inoffensive to as many people as possible - the one Elderly scholar of the Hebrew Bible in attendance is offended - for which I don’t apologize - and mutters that he’s blowing this pop stand-up joint to go back to the two hookers and the eight ball in his hotel room. Like you do.
<<Rainbow bee-eaters are a common species and can be found during the summer in un-forested areas in most of southern Australia and Tasmania, however they are becoming increasingly rare in Suburban parks. They migrate north during the winter into northern Australia, New Guinea, and some of the southern islands of Indonesia.>>
- from Von Juntz’s Unaussprechliche Kulten
The Story of Igneus (we’re back to that one again, aren’t we) Simon the Rainbow Bee Eater Pt. 3
Simon was eventually heartbroken - and a little relieved, like you are - to find out that his monogamous love had flown the coop, or tunnel in this case. (Rainbow Bee-Eaters are monogamous life-long, and this ain’t no lie. I swear to you on a stack of copies of Catcher in the Rye. Oh, you saw “Fried Green Tomatoes”. Okay, moving on) But actually they are monagamous, that’s in Von Juntz, or Wikipedia. As the case may be.
So he had to winter north in New Guinea alone, without his love. Only, this time there was a difference. (ed. comment - not sure if I should repeat something along the lines of “you remember the difference I mentioned before…have to think about that one. And hey idiot, make sure not to zone out and read this editorial comment in the middle of the presentation.) A thick haze covered the brilliant green pinnacles of the Owen Stanley Mountains. Simon had no idea that there were fires in the forests of Indonesia and Malaysia whose dense smoke cover had drifted over to New Guinea. It caused some problems with navigation, but he found his way to a small grove next to a meadow of Kunai grass, and beneath a root he began to excavate a temporary winter den (this was typically Sara’s job but she was nowhere to be found, as above…) There were several other Rainbow Bee-Eaters that he vaguely recognized by scent and plumage - whether from his birth meadow in the Australian outback or from previous socialization here wintering, he had no ability to recollect. After completing the den, his eye was caught by a strange flashing in the undergrowth that looked, but did not smell, like water, and he flew over to investigate.
<<Rainbow bee-eaters mostly eat flying insects, but, as their name implies, they have a real taste for bees. Rainbow bee-eaters are always watching for flying insects, and can spot a potential meal up to 150 feet away. Once it spots an insect a bee-eater will swoop down from its perch and catch it in its long, slender, black bill and fly back to its perch. Bee-eaters will then knock their prey against their perch to subdue it. Even though rainbow bee-eaters are actually immune to the stings of bees and wasps, upon capturing a bee they will rub the insect’s stinger against their perch to remove it, closing their eyes to avoid being squirted with poison from the ruptured poison sac. Bee-eaters can eat several hundred bees a day, so they are obviously resented by beekeepers, but their damage is generally balanced by their role in keeping pest insects such as locusts, hornets, and wasps under control.>>
-The Dark Tower, vol. 43, Stephen King - (I may have miscopied this after falling asleep watching “Rocky Balboa - The Revenant Boxer Returns from the Grave, for the Twelfth Time,” the new George Romero lullaby.
The Story of Ingenious Simon the 4th Igneous Indigene…
Here the manuscript of Simon ends, trailing off into indecipherable scrawls and age-browned markings, which science assures us are either chocolate ice-cream stains or human blood.
<<Breeding season is before and after the rainy season in the north, and from November to January in the south. Rainbow bee-eaters are believed to mate for life. The male will bring the female insects while she digs the burrow that will be their nest. The bee-eater digs its burrow by balancing on its wings and feet, and digs with its bill, then pushing loose soil backwards with its feet while balancing on its bill. The female bee-eater can dig about three inches down every day. The nest tunnel is very narrow, and the birds’ bodies press so tightly against the tunnel walls that when the birds enter and exit their movement acts like a piston, pumping in fresh air and pushing out stale air. Rainbow bee-eaters have also been known to share their nest tunnels with other bee-eaters and sometimes even other species of birds. The female lays between 3 and 7 glossy white eggs, which are incubated for about 24 days until hatching. The young bee-eaters fledge after about 30 days and are fed by both parents, as well as any older bee-eaters that may not have paired off or have lost their mate.>>
- For Love of Joplin, Tony Jones
So what you’re telling me, with the piston-tunnel comment, is that life sucks for these birds. (wait for applause to die. Wait, no applause? bring out the big guns.) I had no idea that fledge was a real word. I thought the expression “full-fledged “came out of thin air, like the universe in a Creationist mystery, with no antecedent matter.
But Einstein does not play dice. He prefers Texas Hold ‘Em. (rim shot)
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