Animal Fables V: Ostrich

Once upon a time, there lived an ostrich called Nerys.

Even by the stand­ards of most ostriches, Nerys was par­tic­u­larly nervous. All the other ostriches called her Nervous Nerys, which they thought was hil­ari­ous. It wasn’t, but ostriches have a poor sense of humour and thus find unima­gin­at­ive allit­er­a­tion almost ridicu­lously amusing.

So, due to her nerves, Nerys spent most of her days with her head bur­ied in the sand, avoid­ing everything. Life espe­cially. And other ostriches.

One after­noon, as the rest of the ostriches were relax­ing, Nerys sud­denly and unex­pec­tedly popped her head out of the sand, looked around excitedly and screeched at the top of her voice.

All the other ostriches came dash­ing over to her just as fast as their com­ical walks would carry them.

“What is it, Nerys? What’s wrong?” they all asked, with con­cerned twitches of their beaks.

“Oh, noth­ing!” said Nerys. “I just thought I should tell you all that it’s abso­lutely fas­cin­at­ing down there.”

“Where?” piped up one par­tic­u­larly argu­ment­at­ive ostrich.

“In the sand, silly! It’s won­der­ful! There are worms, strange little insects, plants, beau­ti­ful shift­ing lay­ers of sand gran­ules — there’s so much to see, to sense and to think about.”

And with that, Nerys popped her head back in the sand, whilst all the other ostriches looked down at her, com­pletely bewildered.

The End.

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