It's funny the reaction I get when someone asks me my starsign at a party. I tell them I'm a Scorpio, and they go, "Ooh, ooh okay" in a tone that you'd expect to hear if you told your best friend you have testicular cancer. I don't believe in starsigns. I'm certainly not the nasty, stinging creature depicted by the scorpion. In fact there are lots of things that people who judge me by my starsign will never know. They'll never know that I can't have a shower without removing the daddy longlegs from it so that they won't be drowned. They'll never know that I don't bait my hook when I go fishing with my old man.
However I did discover yesterday that maybe there is a bit of the scorpion in me. Standing at Flinders Street Station waiting for a train, I found myself wondering why the guy on the platform across from me was throwing all his chips onto the tracks in front of us. The answer soon came when an arriving train ran over the seagull that was eating the chips off the track. The guy grinned triumphantly to his friend; they both had a chuckle about it. I doubt they had any idea how close they came to receiving a sting they'd remember for a long time.
I looked at the broken little body on the tracks, observing the feathers shifting gently in the afternoon breeze. I wondered to myself if maybe that tiny bird was a metaphor for something much bigger. Sighing, I made my way home.
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4 comments:
Ahem. I've had that reaction so often that I now prefer to play up to that image - it's an awesome way to bend the weak and stupid to one's will...
What arseholes those men are. There's really no excusing such cruelty. I can't understand people who cannot or do not empathise with other living things - especially when it involves intentionally causing their death.
I would have been very tempted to kick the crap out of them.
There is no excuse - and they came very close to following their victim.
GAH! That is horrible! Why? Why do that?
I hate seagulls, but not that much.
How did you get away without nightmares replaying the images in your head?
Oh, I suppose I probably had a few nightmares.
As for why they did it - who knows? To fill their empty lives with the joy of death I suspect.
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