IF I WERE
Mae Ondracek
© 2001
If I were a bird, I’d soar above the treetops
enjoying all the sights I‘ve only read about in books and magazines. In this big wide world, there are so many
beautiful sights to see, but I’ll only do a few of them today.
I’d be taking time to visit all the wild animals. Marveling at the antelope, so graceful and
beautiful, but wait, here comes the king lion, his muscles rippling in
anticipation of a good meal. It’s sad
to see an antelope go down, but this is the way of the wild, some must die for
others to survive. I don’t want to see
more of this, so....
On to another exotic place to see all those great and
pretty birds, cousins of mine, you know.
Those parrots are so colorful and look at that wingspan; it has to be
over three feet across. They are very
graceful despite that fact. That little
green parrot is so cute and look, how he is dancing around; he really wants to
be noticed.
But I better be on my way.
On to the cold ice and snow to watch one of my favorites, the
penguins. They wear those party suits
of black and white and strut their stuff doing the “Penguin Waddle.” Look at all the furry babies riding on their
parent’s feet. They don’t look like a
penguin with all that fuzz on them.
Penguins don’t walk well on land but see how graceful they are in the
water? Well, it’s getting late and I
want to take a quick trip over the desert.
For a while I enjoy following the up and down of the
mountains, until I spy some flowering cactus, so I swoop down to get a better
look. Below me I can see the giant
saguaro cactus, aren’t they something, so tall and majestic? It may be a desert but there are still a lot
of plants and other things to see. Now
there’s a cute bird, the Gimbal Quail.
Don’t you just love their black floppy topknots? I can barely make out the baby quail; they
are so tiny and fuzzy and run so fast that they are just a blur.
Oh,
look! There’s an old wagon trail. Can’t you just imagine the hardships those
people went through? Sometimes walking
for miles, leading their teams. Then
having to leave their belongings alongside the trail. A sad thing to do, giving up precious personal items. They were hoping to arrive at a destination
for a better life and so many didn’t make it.
Yes, if I was a bird, I could fly all
over this big wide world of ours, seeing such beautiful and interesting
sights. I could learn so much more
about this great country of ours; things that I could never learn from books.