Reputed Bird Expert Has to Eat Crow

My fraudulent reputation as a bird expert brings many curious questions to my desk, almost none of which I can answer.

A woman in the Valley once asked me to identify a large, glossy black bird that goes “caw,” and I was able to inform her, with little doubt, that the bird she had in mind was a crow.

Beyond such elementary conundrums as that, however, I am helpless. I don’t know a warbler from a shrew.

Now, Nancy White of Glendale seeks to exploit my imaginary expertise by asking me what I think of a new and frightening theory she heard described on the “Wink and Bill” talk show on KABC.

She writes: “It seems there exists a Birdist Organization with a new theory on the Creation. They believe our Earth is actually an egg which was laid by a giant space bird, and for eons and eons the nucleus has been evolving into a baby space bird which will hatch imminently.

“Furthermore, we humans, animals and plants are merely so many bacteria and fungi that appear microscopically on the surface of any ordinary egg. The deep interior rumblings and vibrations which the unenlightened refer to as ‘earthquakes’ are, in fact, the efforts of the baby bird to burst out of its shell, and when this blessed event occurs, we bacteria will be hurled into outer space and oblivion.”

White wonders what truth I may assign to this theory. She herself is skeptical, evidently, because of her maternal instincts. “What kind of bird,” she asks, would leave her young unattended for so long? Why is she not sitting on the nest? Could it be that some giant space cat may have devoured her?”

I must disabuse White on that point. Many animals, including human beings, abandon their young; and if I were a cosmic bird, I certainly wouldn’t want to sit on anything as volatile as the Earth. Also irreverent of the nesting instinct is the cuckoo bird, which is reputed to raid other birds’ nests and eat their eggs.

As for the credibility of the theory, I find it no harder to believe than the two predominant contemporary theories about the Earth’s origin: one that it was created by God in six days and the other that it was formed from a disk of dust around the sun about 5 billion years ago. Both, if you ask me, are highly improbable.

At first glance, the big bird theory seems no more plausible than the flat Earth theory espoused by members of the Flat Earth Society. I have talked to the head of this group and, as far as I can tell, he is dead serious. Flat Earthers ignore all the evidence that the Earth is a sphere, including the thrilling photographs made from spaceships, which they dismiss as hoaxes.

I don’t know what the Flat Earthers would say about the big bird theory, but I have an idea they would reject it, because an egg is somewhat round, though rather more ovate than the Earth itself.

I suppose the theory is right, though, in supposing that we humans and all other life on the planet are hardly more than bacteria and fungi in the cosmic scheme. Certainly the two predominant contemporary theories contemplate an end to life on Earth--a day of reckoning, so to speak--and that fits the big bird theory that when the baby bird bursts out of its shell it will all be over for us bacteria on the surface of the shell.

I think all these theories are only hysterical attempts by the bewildered to explain the world we live in. As Lewis Thomas says, it is inevitable that human beings, seeking to understand the cosmos, can only be dumbfounded.

I have my own theory, that being my right. I think the Earth is driven by an internal combustion engine (probably Japanese), and that one of these days the fan belt is going to break and the engine will burn up.

When that happens the Earth will stop rotating. One side will fry from constant exposure to the sun, and the other side will freeze.

On the other hand, of course, if the big bird theory is right we may be eaten some day by a cosmic cuckoo bird.

Makes as much sense as any other doomsday theory.