To Elect a Mockingbird

The days when Kings led their Army into battle are long gone. Not so, for princely animals who through loyalty, devotion, or instinct act at times with seemingly calculated personal abandon.

It was a spring day when I stopped my car at an intersection, then made a gentle right turn onto a crossing street. In front of me, scarcely 30 feet away, a curious standoff was underway.

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A mockingbird was standing in the road, face to face with a cat that weighed a good 100 times more than the bird. They were no more than five feet away from each other. Since it was spring, I’m guessing that mockingbird was defending a nest with young.

As the cat saw my car approaching, he moved from the center of the road to an adjacent driveway, and the fearless bird flew up to the top of a mailbox just a few feet away. There the slim grey bird held the high ground and acted as hawkish as a little bird can. It was not in him to be intimidated by a much larger, more powerful, born-killer of birds.

As I continued down the road and lost sight of that duo, I had a funny thought. If that mockingbird ran for political office, I think I’d vote for him.

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Granted, that was a curious, and to me humorous thought which I rethought when I shortly thereafter found myself reading to my Granddaughter the best-selling book “Duck for President.”

Well, Okay then, maybe it wasn’t such an idle thought after all. If a duck can be elected, at least in the mind’s eye of children, how much better a very brave and cunning mockingbird?

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