Why Birds Matter

Old dogs with gray beards, penguins and cats wearing tuxedos, and any bird (a cardinal is a great example) that looks like it's wearing a little hat. Dogs that are friends with cats, birds that ride on the backs of elephants, and an article I once read about Fred the Labrador and Dennis the duckling and how Dennis rides on Fred's head. Then there are animals that have regal old human names (a gentle nod to my old beagles Henry and Tess), others that have Harry Potter names (don't even get me STARTED on this), and some who are just named for what they are (all the lovely characters in Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, Peter Rabbit).

This podcast is about none of that, but it triggered all of it. Birds matter to me always, and whether they make me gasp because no bird flies like a hummingbird does, whether they make me happy because they're stitched into a baseball hat in the early weeks of Spring Training and you just can't beLIEVE that you've got a new season on your hands, whether they make me laugh because there may be no move more hilarious than the formally-dressed-sliding-on-the-stomach-then-jumping-upright-and-right-into-a-waddle penguin, or whether they make me SMILE because you wonder what it would feel like to have a snowy owl click her beak at you, they're just beautiful beautiful.