A Lesson Dawns On Me: Human Disability Bird Ability.

On the edge of our 7th floor apartment window, roosts a flock of starlings every night, that come back from their day’s activities at the time we have our dinner. Our dinning room window is, I think, their family room, where they congregate to chill from the days pressures and compare daily notes. They chirp to each other in a very human-like manner, peck at each other in a way lovers or family do, and spend the progression of the twilight in social engagements humans would have to try very hard to match.

This evening I witnessed something very humane, and something inhuman with the merry ledge starling family. After the flock returned to the roost, a latecomer flies back and lands on one leg in the middle of the congregation. Everybody present chirped their greetings to this latecomer and danced up and down in joy for what seemed like a homecoming merriment. Now that was totally humane. Don’t read me wrong, humane, not human. I think there is a chasm between those two definitions. I noticed the one leg landing, and being a stupid and an assuming human, I attributed the merry ruffle of the flock to the antic of a one leg landing. How wrong I was proved to be, when I noticed this little fellow hopping around on one leg, his only leg, to peck each of his flock-mate one by one. This starling was the Long John Silver of the flock without clutches, prosthetics or temperament.

Now comes in the inhuman bit: this fellow was as proud as proud can be with his one leg, and the rest seemed to treat him like he deserved accolades for having gone about his day of forage with less tools but not ability. This little homecoming ceremony on the window ledge has put my human pride to trial and shame; why should human disability be treated as inability?

Bravo my neighbors, you have given me a lesson to pass on to mankind.

Good night sterlings, see you tomorrow evening.