“Hey!” the yellow canary called out.
Landing on a windowsill, a brown pigeon stared at the canary. “What do you want?” he said, tucking his wings behind him.
“I heard that pigeons are the most talented birds in the world,” the canary tweeted. “That they can fly and stop and dive with precision and timing unmatched by any other bird.”
“Yep,” the pigeon cooed, pecking at a crumb on the windowsill. “We’re that good.”
The canary fluffed her wings. “I don’t think you’re that good at all.”
The pigeon looked up from his crumb meal. “Really?”
“Yes. In fact, it has been proven that a well-trained canary can fly faster and make sharper turns than a pigeon any day of the week. Why, I am actually descended from ten generations of acrobatic canaries, and the legends are long about how well we can fly.”
“That’s a lot of squawk,” the pigeon replied. “Prove it.”
“Okay,” said the canary. “From where I am perched now, I’ll fly toward the park, right where that elm tree is, turn left, soar under that mailbox, then straight up toward that traffic light, go around it twice, down to where those two kids are tossing that plastic disc around, stop just as the disc is going from one child to the other. Then I will turn right towards those playground bars, weave in and out of six or seven of them, then fly low towards that springer spaniel over there – I’ll buzz him low so he can bark and drive his master crazy – then I’ll zip back to here.”
“Is that all you plan on doing?” said the pigeon.
“For a start.”
“Okay,” said the pigeon. “You have my attention. Let’s see what you can do. Impress me.”
The canary fluttered her wings, and said, “Okay, stand back, here I go!”
Suddenly, there was a dull clunk. Feathers fluttered to the ground.
“Did you forget something?” asked the pigeon.
The canary shook her head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
As the pet shop owner entered the room to see what the ruckus was all about, the pigeon flapped his wings alongside the windowsill perch. Before the pigeon flew into the sky, he offered the canary a piece of advice.
“Next time, make sure that before you promise the moon, that you at least open the cage door.”
Chuck The Writer 
Aesop meets the zen master.
First of all, this is a well-developed anecdote. Was it intended to be merely an amusing little tale? If it has a greater point, is that point singular and well defined? Like most readers, I can assign to the fable many interpretations, many applications. Was this your intention, Master Yoda?–“what it means to me.”
My best guess, Chuck, is, sometimes a story is just a story.
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Frank –
Just a quick little tale for a Saturday morning. Glad you liked it.
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400 posts…and then Chuck had nothing left to write about…
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