Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Dear Army Guys,

Alas, Li’l Stupid Bird is gone, just as I was beginning to get attached to the little fella. Both he and Stupid Mama Bird were there this morning, but when I went to check on them early this afternoon the basket was empty.

As I stood there, gazing into my empty nest, I had a mental vision of Stupid Mama Bird tenderly coaxing Li’l Stupid Bird to stretch his fledgling wings and fly with her off into the sunset. (Okay, they must have decamped sometime in the late morning, which pretty much puts the kibosh on my sunset vision, but that’s not the point.) I scanned the rooftops hoping to catch sight of them perched cozily together enjoying the breeze. As I turned to go back into the house I happened to look down and there was Li’l Bird, hunched in the dirt next to the front porch. Stupid Mama was nowhere in sight.

I kept an eye on Li’l for about an hour, thinking Stupid Mama would surely return and offer her youngster aid, comfort, or at least a flying lesson. Li’l just squatted there the whole time looking scared and miserable. Stupid Mama never came back, that bitch.

I suspect she plotted the whole thing. She got tired of hanging around in a flower basket so she unceremoniously kicked Li’l out of the nest and took off without so much as a fare-thee-well. She’s probably headed for Vegas.

Now that I think about it, she always did seem kind of sleezy, the way she pranced around shaking those fancy-schmancy tail feathers. I think I saw her wink at a robin one day, that artless slut. I got the impression the robin was saying something like, “As if, lady, as if.” What’s more, all evidence indicates Stupid Mama Bird laid those two eggs out of wedlock.

When she first moved into my hanging flower basket I checked on the internet to get an idea how long I might expect a mourning dove to hang around. It said that mourning doves mate for life and that, once the eggs hatch, the father returns to help out. Well, no father bird ever crossed the threshold of that hanging flower basket. I never even saw one flying around the general vicinity. Never once did I see any sign of marriage, or even illicit cohabitation for that matter. I’m not one to gossip about the birds in the neighborhood but, just between you and me, it looks like Stupid Mama Bird is a nothing but a cheap tart. I should have reported her to Chicks and Bird Family Services.

In any case, the bird-brained bitch bird never came back and poor abandoned Little Stupid Bird was left in the bushes to fend for his tiny self. I began to worry about the possibility of a stray cat getting wind of his misfortune.

Stray cats have a sixth sense about these things. Perhaps a stray cat was already homing in on Li’l’s plaintive cheeps, stalking its way across the lawns and under the fences of our neighborhood with evil intent. I looked around and didn’t see any stray cats, which only goes to prove how stealthy they can be. Something had to be done. I decided it was my duty as a hanging flower basket owner to teach that baby bird to fly.

I must have a natural talent for this sort of thing because it really didn’t take very long. I started by shooing him around the front yard in little practice circles. He was cooperative and hopped around flapping his wings, but seemed unaware of his innate ability to leave the ground. I adjusted my method to a sort of running back and forth regimen, the goal being to introduce him to the concept of acceleration. Soon enough, he was achieving brief airborne intervals, between which he tended to tumble head over talons in the grass.

I chased him across the lawn about a dozen times and, although his speed and coordination were improving, he just didn’t seem to be getting the hang of it. I considered strapping him to the hood of my car somehow, thinking maybe I could drive him around the block as a sort of flight simulator. Li’l and I sat in the bushes to talk it over and I happened to idly pull a weed not far from his resting spot. It startled him and, just like that, he took off into the air, soaring to brand new heights. Well, not exactly “soaring,” given that he nearly crashed into the neighbor’s house, but it was a thrilling moment nonetheless.

I’m thinking of starting my own flight school for abandoned birds. All I need is a set of those orange flags the municipal airport employees use to direct takeoffs and landings, and a little harness for my hood-ornament flight simulator invention.


Much Love,

--An Army Mom

Incredible but true PS: A little while ago my friend Ann and I were sitting on the deck when Ann said, “Oh my god, there’s an ugly little bird on the rail right behind your head!” I gasped and turned around, scaring the poor thing into the evergreen tree. It was Li’l Stupid Bird, of course, come to offer his thanks and farewell. I can hear him cheeping out there even now. I’ve got to get a lawn statue of St. Francis of Assisi. (We have a lot in common, you know.)

Wednesday, June 29, 2005


Dear Army Guys,

Quick, look down! Are you wearing clean socks? I hope so. Foot fungus is nothing to fool around with, you know. Rudy has some sort of toenail disease that causes his toenails to look flaky and brittle in addition to their usual gnarly appearance. I told him to get some of that Lamasil I’ve seen advertised in magazines, but he ignores my medical advice on the grounds that I’m a hypochondriac and don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe so, but it seems to me that people who run around on what more closely resemble hooves than feet ought not be so blasé.

I’m taking a break today from my ambitious BIG GARDENING WEEK projects due to excessive heat and physical exhaustion. Naturally, I selected the hottest week of the year to tear out half the landscaping in our yard. It was 97 degrees yesterday afternoon when I finally finished the “East Garden” as I’ve pretentiously decided to call it. (I’ll send before and after photos as soon as I get a new color cartridge for my printer.) I realize that you guys are suffering much worse conditions, but no amount of empathy on my part would save me from the heart attack I’m sure I’d be having right now if I’d moved on to my front yard project today as planned. The newspaper tells me it will rain tomorrow and cool off to a pleasant 84 degrees Friday and Saturday. While it’s true that this particular weather report is usually wrong, I’m going to trust it this time. After all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Rudy is taking a vacation day on Friday and we’ve planned one of our fun-filled family excursions. Intrepid adventurers that we are, we like to take summer day trips to explore various Illinois sights and tourist attractions. Last Friday, for example, we drove to Bolingbrook to watch a stupid Batman movie at an IMAX theater. Personally, I wouldn’t bother walking into the next room to see a Batman movie. Rudy and Dylan, however, find nothing odd in the notion of traveling hundreds of miles just to watch a guy in a Halloween mask leap from the fake-looking rooftops of Gotham City while wearing a large kite strapped to his ridiculous scuba suit. Call me a snob, but those sorts of overdone cinematic hijinx tend to make me snicker at inappropriate moments when everyone else in the theater is riveted to the screen, eyes wide and mouths hanging open. I’m one of the hated few who openly laugh during James Bond movies.

Also, the IMAX theater was air-conditioned by a sadistic Eskimo conglomerate. It was like sitting in a gigantic refrigerator for two hours. You could realistically put King Kong into suspended animation in there if the need arose. I had on a pair of sandals which, by the time the movie ended, were frozen to the soles of my frostbitten feet. It was difficult to concentrate on the movie due to a recurring fantasy in which I had a pair of socks in my purse. I could actually visualize myself back home that morning saying, “I think I’ll bring a pair of socks just in case it’s cold in the theater.”

On an intellectual level I knew I did not bring a pair of socks and that it was only wishful thinking. Still, I couldn’t help rummaging around in my purse a few times just in case. I was a good sport about it, though, and I did enjoy the 3D shark documentary we got to see after Batman finally pulled himself together and vowed to carry on his good deeds in the sequel he’s obviously planning to bore me with next year.

This Friday we’re going to the new Abraham Lincoln museum in Springfield, which is an excursion I’ve been anticipating for months. I love history and science, so my only requests for this summer’s family day trips were to see the new Lincoln museum and the “Body World” exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I plan to torture Rudy and Dylan with lots of Lincoln facts on the way to Springfield, thus paying them back for the whole Batman thing. Did you know that Abraham Lincoln’s stepmother was Sarah Bush Johnston? Given that my family name is Johnston and our president is a member of the Bush family, I think this is an interesting and significant bit of information. I wonder if our family genealogists, whoever they are, have looked into this connection. Maybe I should be getting some sort of family discount on income taxes.

You will be pleased to know that the mourning dove living in my hanging flower basket has, indeed, produced a living offspring. The baby bird is growing fast and the mother bird now seems to expect me to babysit during the early evening hours. She flies off to do her own thing and I hang around the front porch worrying that the baby will do something stupid like try to fly. It stands up and flexes its little wings and looks like it wants to get involved in some sort of dangerous pre-adolescent activity like skateboarding or internet chat rooms. That little bird is looking a bit too feisty for its own good the last couple of days. During the daytime hours the mother holds it down by sheer force of superior body weight, but when she’s out of the nest the little one jumps around and does not seem to realize he could easily fall out of the hanging flower basket, thus endangering the propagation of his species. I have affectionately christened him “Little Stupid Bird,” and he seems to respond to his name when I tell him to settle down and be more careful. I’ll send you a photo of him as soon as I get a new color cartridge for my printer.

Until then, and always, wear clean socks.

Much Love,

--An Army Mom

Dear Army Guys,
I noticed something disturbing last night when I put on the Tinkerbell pajamas I purchased on our recent visit to Disney World. Tinkerbell looks an awful lot like a young Hillary Clinton. I know you’re probably saying, “Get OUT, she does not!” Well, she does, and unfortunately once you’ve noticed the remarkable similarity you can’t unnoticed it. Here, take a look for yourself:

(picture of Tinkerbell)

See what I mean? I’m trying to carry on with my life as if this were no big deal, but I could lose some sleep over it. I mean, who wants to go to bed at night wearing Hillary Clinton pajamas? And once I started thinking about it I realized Tink also sort of looks like Ellen Degeneres, which, believe me, is no help at all. The entire train of thought just leads me further and further from getting full enjoyment out of my new Disney pajamas. I’m not giving up, though. Sooner or later I’m going to come up with someone else Tinkerbell looks like, and by gosh it’d better be someone I can sleep with. Figuratively speaking, of course.


I guess I should give you an update on the stupid mourning dove living in my hanging flower basket. It’s still there and at least one of the eggs hatched already. I only got a brief glimpse of the fuzzy little thing and, frankly, it looked dead to me. But Mama Bird apparently doesn’t agree since she’s more protective than ever. No amount of shouting and waving will make her fly away now. Yesterday I caught her in the act of poking around beneath herself with her beak. Maybe she was feeding that dead chick somehow. She stopped as soon as she saw me watching and tried to act all casual, as if nothing’s going on in there. It’s obvious that she suspects me of being some sort of vicious predator. That hardly seems fair since I’m letting her live rent-free in my hanging flower basket. Does she have any idea what that thing would go for in a place like Manhattan? Birds would literally knock each other off ledges to get into a nice basket like that. New York City birds would pay big night-crawler sized deposits just to get on the waiting list. This stupid bird is just plain ungrateful if you ask me.


Much Love,

--An Army Mom