The Death of the Dodo and the Salvation of the Parrot-sheep.

Remember the Dodo, remember their words
for they were wise and intelligent birds
As soon as the smoking of the peace-pipe had begun
The Dodo pronounced "Pale-face speak with forked tongue."
And so it has been from that day to this...
When they speak of peace you can still hear the hiss!

Long ago in the land of Uz there lived seven wolves who had been cast out from their pack.

The journeyed long often on the brink of starvation until they chanced upon a cave which led into a valley surrounded by mountains.
In this valley lived the Dodo, man-sized birds with beautiful, multicoloured beaks. They were somewhat clumsy and slow and of course being so big they couldn’t fly but then they had no natural enemies and lived an easy existence feasting on the fruit that fell from the various trees.

Now, I don’t want to say much more about these creatures because their part in the story is almost over. The hungry wolves quickly discovered they were easy prey and eventually wiped the whole lot out with only thousands of beaks remaining to serve as multi-coloured monuments.

Quite soon the wolves were hungry again and, since they were quite old by now, their future was looking grim. Then, fortune smiled on them again and they discovered another cave that led under the mountains into an even larger valley.

This valley was filled with sheep but they were quite fleet-footed and it was all the wolves could do to catch the occasional lame or sick animal. The sheep soon became more wary and once again things were looking bad for the wargs until...

The most cunning of the group realised that they could use the sheep skins of the previous meals to make clothes and pass themselves off as sheep – after all sheep are not very bright.

Luckily for the wolves the sheep had little language and no imagination and so they didn’t share their doubts about the ‘new’ sheep with each other.

Usually If a sheep did manage to say anything the rest would simply reply with a “bah!” and go back to munching grass and watching the youngsters gambolling. Of course there was a growing sense of unease as members of the flock started to mysteriously disappear but nothing much was said.

In the meantime the wolves were not really happy either since it was getting increasingly difficult to encourage any sheep to leave the flock so that they could butcher them.

The cunning wolf had another great idea they would go back to the previous valley and push their sheep-skin covered snouts into multi-coloured beaks and return with tales of the wolves they had killed with their revolutionary new weapon.

The sheep were mesmerised by the beautiful beaks and of course they nearly all wanted one... no-one thought to ask where the dead wolf carcasses lay!
Thinking it would lull the sheep into a false sense of security the wolves led a large group of sheep through the cave to the valley of the dead Dodo. The sheep gleefully pushed their noses into the beaks and then pushing against the ground forced them firmly into place. They returned triumphant.

There were serious drawbacks – it was almost impossible to get them off again and very difficult to eat grass with them on. The wolf-sheep suggested that the beaked ones be designated as Defenders by virtue of their wolf killing abilities and be granted the pick of the long grass (since because of their beaks they couldn’t actually manage to eat short grass now).

Since the sheep now felt safer they would wander further afield but since they tended to go in groups it was still difficult for the wolves to find prey in suitable small numbers in suitable places.

The cunning wolf again saved the day – he realised that they could exploit their fame as wolf-killers by teaching the beaked ones how to fight. Since there were seven of them they split the Defenders into seven groups and proceeded to teach them how to use their new weapons.

Of course ‘accidents’ happened but it was all for the sake of the security of the flock and so new volunteers would ‘Don the Deadly Beak of the Defender’ in place of those who died in training.
The wolves realised that even sheep are not thick enough to keep accepting ‘accidents’ as an excuse for the death of their friends so it was agreed that they would say that the Defenders were now fully trained and ready to take their places scattered around the countryside ready to tackle any wondering wolf.

The wolf-sheep divided the valley into seven and took responsibility for the Defenders of their area.
They quickly became heroes and no-one seemed to notice that there were a lot more sheep dead or missing than ever before and that the training of the replacement Defenders had now fallen to ‘trainers’ appointed by the wolf-sheep to give them more time to tour the perimeters of their land.

The wolves were quite content now save for one thing – they didn’t like having to wear their sheep’s clothing. They decided that they would invent a deity and convince all the sheep of the power and wisdom of this god so that they could claim they knew of a holy cave where this god sometimes resided. The plan being to convince the sheep that they should visit this cave and certain, lucky ones, would be chosen to go to the Holy Land and live with god.

Sheep are so gullible! They not only adopted the new god whole-heartedly but also went around repeating parrot fashion the holy sayings of their new religion. Absolute rubbish of course but then the wolves had convinced them that merely repeating the words made them more intelligent.

They chanted things like :
“Nothing exploded and then learned how to curve.”
“Sheep rule the world by virtue of their intelligence” and
“The bleat is mightier than the claw!”

Oh how the wolves laughed!

***********************************************************

Speak to me of shepherds and I will speak of sheep
While wolves select the harvest then blood is all you'll reap.
Speak to me of monsters and I’ll speak to you of men.
Show me an injustice and I will show you ten!
Speak to me of wisdom and I will not reply
For if wisdom could be wrapped in words
You would think the same as I. :O)

Speak to me of monsters and I’ll speak to you of oil.
Greedy men who rule the world and see it as their spoil.
While Big Oil rapes the planet and even angels weep.
The wolves control the shepherds so who speaks for the sheep?
With many millions set to die as food is turned to gold.
We will all be horrified yet we'll accept the lies we’re told!

For those who hadn’t guessed it the ‘nothing’ which exploded was the Big Bang and once it learned to curve it was simply Einstein space. :O)
Mind you, it's hard to believe that even sheep would not question how nothing could explode or be curved ;O)
Mind you the latest theory seems more like the Buddhist belief that it is a repeating cycle
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Physicists-Claim-Evidence-of-Universe-Bef...