Bird of the Week: Narrow-Billed Tody
It's the cute little rage-monster we need right now.
Today’s Bird of the Week was inspired by the fact that, as Caitlin so eloquently reminded us yesterday, everything sucks right now. Everywhere you look, what do you find? Badness! It’s a bad bad bad bad world out there.
Caitlin’s powerful words got me all riled up about the suckiness of our current era. But they also led me to search for a bird whose outward demeanor could match my sour feelings about the dismal state of things.
Which brings me to today’s bird: the narrow-billed tody.
The narrow-billed tody is a very small bird that lives exclusively on the island of Hispaniola, which comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It mostly makes its home in the island’s pine forests, way up in the mountains. And, according to Birds Carribean, it is always, always, always looking for bugs:
[Todies] have a voracious appetite and are seen in a near constant state of foraging. They’ll devour anything- from gooey caterpillars to butterflies, and have even been observed munching on 18 different species of fruits!
I’m reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer is in hell and happily eats an endless assembly line of donuts. The narrow-billed tody would do great down there too!
The tody is also very adorable, with iridescent green and red coloring, and it makes a very cute little sound. These would all be good reasons to select it for BOTW. But it flew into first place for me because of one thing: the look on its face. Check it out.
BOOM. This bird is PISSED OFF. Look at that glower! What a cute little rage-monster. This bird wants nothing to do with wars and elections and all the rest of the nonsense around there. (Also I have a cold—like WTF.)
“But Jack, you’re anthropomorphizing a bird whose face just sets that way, how do you know it’s mad?” you might ask. To which I say, how do you know it’s NOT mad? It lives on this planet—wouldn’t that be enough?
Just imagine looking up and seeing that staring down at you. I’d turn and run. This is giving off enough “the next person who says something to me is getting eaten up like one of those caterpillars I love” energy to power a small city. What a mug!
Even its relatives don’t transmit quite the same fed-up-ness. Here’s a picture of the broad-billed tody, which, surprise, is a lot like the narrow-billed one except that its bill is broader (also it’s colored slightly differently):
See? There’s a more settled, resigned kind of demeanor here. The narrow tody, on the other hand:
Hell yes.
Another reason the narrow-billed tody has for being unhappy? You guessed it: its habitat is constantly threatened by deforestation and climate change. As we say so often on Bird of the Week, humanity please get your shit together. Or the narrow-billed tody will come for us all.
A reminder: you can check out our complete Bird of the Week list here, and get in touch with your bird suggestions (angry or not) at hello@discourseblog.com.
body: round
bill: narrow
rage: bottomless
It is indeed the cute little rage-monster needed right now!