some chirp. some grunt

I can actually get quite ticked off with the birds outside my window! There are some that sing the most beautiful songs and I love to awaken to the peaceful, melodious choir singing outside my window...

Then there are other days. Days like today... when i don't know what type of mismanaged gene pool has allowed these certain birds to be naturally selected. Clearly singing is no prerequisite for staying alive or evolving. They grunt, for goodness sake. And I can't tell you how much this affects my mood waking up in the mornings, perhaps the entire day!

So silly.

But why can some birds sing and others can't? And why do I care?
(Please ignore the fact that I stared the above two sentences with conjunctions- i hear that with blogging anything goes...)

I'm reminded of Mark Twain when he said, "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to." The animal world is quite different from our world... it used to be that people would argue the similarities between the animal world and the human race and monitor the ways that we were like the chimpanzee and how how it was like us. Nowadays, however, it seems people are more interested in comparing humans with computers. "Is Deep Blue human?"

The point is, we compare. We compare ourselves to ourselves and even to other species!

I'm quite sure the bird doesn't care how it sings. It's me that cares and thinks to myself, "If I was a bird that sang like that i wouldn't open my beak!" It is me that compares the birds to one another. It is me that blushes. It is me who has the curse of comparison.

Perhaps I'm not part of the most evolved species. I'm sure the bird who grunts thinks ill of the man who sings badly and therefore won't open his mouth afraid to look stupid. He will wonder what form of low-life would care about such things.