CATS, BIRDS, AND WORMS

One beautiful, Southwestern morning, I was in the shed filling up a bucket of birdseed to feed and nourish all the winged species we have here in the mountains.

As I took the bucket-o-seeds around to the back bird feeders, I saw something which gave me pause for thought -- our cat, Sydney, in a brazen example of nature's inescapable food chain, was eating a bird.

I was struck by the irony. I'm feeding the birds; my cat's eating the birds.

Sticking with warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered vertebrates, it's often said, "The early bird gets the worm." Then doesn't it also follow that the early worm gets eaten?

You get the promotion, somebody else doesn't, Somebody else wins the turkey raffle, you don't. The good die young, the bad live on.

In life you don't always win and often you're darn lucky to come out even. Life is going to do to you what life does to you. Why is there a tendency in us humans to feel unfairly treated when we don't get what we want? In nature what's fair for the cat is sure not fair for the bird. What's fair for the bird is a real bummer for the worm.

Lesson: Fairness is a non-issue. Some days you're the cat, some days you're the bird.