Animal Fables: Robin

Once upon a time, there lived a pug­na­cious robin called Reginald.

Why was Regin­ald pug­na­cious? Well, because it was in his genes, in his upbring­ing. It was how male robins were sup­posed to be. That’s why, in the weeks approach­ing Christ­mas, Regin­ald simply hated being fawned over by passing humans clad in long winter coats, wrapped in even longer winter scarves, and car­ry­ing shiny, shiny gifts through the snow.

“Look!” the well-meaning bird­spot­ters would coo, excitedly. “There’s a robin red­breast! It must be nearly Christ­mas! Oh, let’s take a pic­ture! Let’s take a pic­ture! We could make a lovely Christ­mas card out of the photo and send it to dear old auntie Vera!”

Regin­ald would growl under his beak — though sadly, because of his bird-like build, this would merely emerge as a charm­ing, warb­ling song, which only suc­ceeded in mak­ing our feathered friend even more endear­ing to the large two-legged creatures admir­ing him from the pave­ment below.

If only the poor unfor­tu­nate humans had been able to speak flu­ent Robinese, they would have clearly heard Regin­ald seething.

“I do not have a red­breast! It’s merely chafed nipples! I am not cute and charm­ing and all those other vomit-inducing things, either. I am a robin. Hear me roar. Well, tweet. But I’m fierce. I’m fero­cious. Grrr. And I abso­lutely do not want to be the pretty pic­ture adorn­ing the front of the sod­ding Christ­mas card to that decrepit old aunt of yours. She not only smells of cough linc­tus and spear­mint indi­ges­tion tab­lets, but she has sag­ging skin too. I’ll show you. I’ll show you all. I will, I will. Oh yes, I damn well will!”

Reginald’s irate responses didn’t work, of course. They never worked. The humans just stood there longer, des­pite the bit­ter chill in the air, and became still more entranced by the robin’s sea­sonal col­our­ing and melodi­ous tones.

So Regin­ald the robin hatched a plan. Recruit­ing the ser­vices of his friend Rod­ney, who happened to be a whizz with those tiny dis­pos­able cam­eras that the two-legged people left lying around, Regin­ald embarked upon a typ­ical young male robin’s night out on the town. This con­sisted of booze, belch­ing and birds. Mainly birds, for obvi­ous reas­ons. In fact, all that was miss­ing was a greasy kebab at the end of the evening.

Dis­play­ing the aggress­ive ter­rit­orial beha­viour so typ­ical of male robins, but which belies their gentle pub­lic image, Regin­ald set about loudly warn­ing the other red­breasts to leave his patch forth­with. He let loose with foul-beaked and dis­grace­fully nasty tweets of “Get off my branch, git-face!” and “Outta my tree, arse-wipe!” And like all the best nights out, Regin­ald fin­ished it off with a few fights at chucking-out time. Pick­ing on the smal­ler birds, he ripped at their feath­ers, poked their eyes out and, in a couple of cases, left them bruised, bloody and beak­less on the frozen ground. Mean­while, Rodney’s cam­era never stopped click­ing and flash­ing for even a moment, as the evening’s activ­it­ies were cap­tured for posterity.

On 24 Decem­ber, the let­ter­boxes up and down the street that Regin­ald called home resoun­ded to the rat­tling of Christ­mas cards fall­ing through the slots. Excited humans rushed to their doormats and ripped open the envel­opes, eager to see which close friend or dis­tant rel­at­ive had sent sea­sonal felicitations.

But instead of cries of joy, all that could be heard from behind the street’s net cur­tains was the sound of jaws thud­ding to the floor, as each house­holder was sud­denly con­fron­ted with a glor­i­ously col­our­ful pic­ture of Regin­ald, snarling his beak and flex­ing his mus­cu­lar wings. There he stood, with one del­ic­ate foot proudly pressed onto the chest of a dead bird whose throat had quite evid­ently been torn out in a par­tic­u­larly bru­tal man­ner. The greet­ing below the pho­to­graph read “Peace, love and good­will at Christmas”.

Inside, writ­ten in a scar­ily jagged scrawl that was clearly the work of someone recov­er­ing from an orgy of viol­ent blood­lust, the card car­ried the fol­low­ing message.

“Not so cute now, am I? Wish­ing you a very merry Christ­mas and a happy new year from your local neigh­bour­hood robin.”

The End.

See also: the ori­ginal Animal Fables series.