Bird of the Day, cont.

"Who would name a bird, a beautiful, unusually  distinguished bird, Killdeer?" 

    "What?" These early morning questions, especially the indignant ones, always surprised her. They shouldn't because he was now on his third or was it the fourth year--felt like the tenth--Bird-a-Day calendar, with pictures of innocent birds that usually resulted in impossible questions that he actually expected her to answer, or to at least ponder with him as he reveled in his new found delight: the variety of rara avis that inhabit this earth.

    She used to say, "Look it up!" It was an obvious suggestion, an excellent suggestion, until she realized how much he enjoyed sharing something new with her, especially every day! Well, okay, it was charming that first year, but her interest in his interest in the details of rara avis nobody had ever heard of had petered out long ago.

    "I mean, really," he was saying, "how could this appealing little bird, with an alert gaze and striped plumage" (he loved stripes) "be called KILL Deer? That little fellow would be no match for a deer, not even a new-born, not even Bambi . . . "

    She used to suggest looking it up when he was on one of his endless series of question-birthing-more-questions diatribe, but he took her advice once too often which added to the inevitable morning monologue, and she gave it up after last month's Shoebill.  The shoebill has a distinctive bill in the shape of a Dutch clog, with a sharp hook at the end and is about one foot long!

    There was more about that damn bird, there was always more and now the Shoe Bill came up more often in normal conversation than normal people would think possible. 

    Well, Killdeer probably had another long explanation in Dutch or Swahili and she didn't have time to hear it. "It's obvious," she said. "That sharp little beak easily pierces deer hides and sucks the blood right out of any inattentive buck."

    "Only bucks?" he said.

    "Yes," she said with an assurance he should have questioned, but didn't. It was their unspoken agreement, timed to end when the Keurig spit out the second cup of coffee.