But I do really, really feel like writing. So here I shall write:
Apparently dodo birds were not really as stupid as people think. Nor were they as fat. I learned this one night at work when in boredom Jon and Brock and I researched it. We also learned that Wikipedia does not like it when you add falsehoods or fibs to their entries. The dodo bird was simply used to living in a place (on some island near Africa in the Indian Ocean) where it had absolutely no predators, and it evolved from its pigeon and dove family members without flight, taking advantage of the fact that it was so large and had no competition. You could say they were quite admirable in their fearlessness towards people; a friendly bird. And one that didn't taste good. I always assumed they were hunted out of existence, or that they were pests, but actually they were mainly killed out by the animals people brought with them (cats, pigs, dogs, rats, macaques). And mans' ever present goal of wiping out nature, a game in which we are currently ahead. They were fruit and seed eaters, had greedy appetites to make it through the times of sparsity, and as such the ones in captivity were easily overfed--and of course the old paintings and drawings that have survived are of those fattened birds. They were, however, quite large in and of themselves. 50 pounds with 9 inch hooked end beaks. I guess with such little wings you have to compensate in other ways.
It's name could have come from several things, namely words sounding like "dodo" that meant "sluggard" and "plump-arse." People didn't so much like them, and so they kind of just dwindled until someone did realize they weren't around any more. A sad end for a mistreated bird that even now is mercilessly mocked in today's age for being so trusting. Sometime before 1700, and less than a 100 years after they were discovered. They then were regarded as a myth, because who could believe in such an ungainly and strange looking creature? Then they found skeletons, Lewis Carroll wrote "Alice and Wonderland" with a dodo character in it, and the rest is history. You could say that Lewis Carroll is mostly responsible for how well known they have become--which is not bad for a guy who may have written it while flying high on opium. Yesterday I researched ear wax. I was really really busy till the night hit, and then there was a lull in which this took place. My research was questioned a few times until I started talking to Carrie about it, and we had a serious conversation about ear wax candles. I for one would like to try them (and who knows, maybe I'll start hearing things correctly, but they're harder to get a hold of then you'd think). I think people are overestimating their abilities and claims, and understandably some people have probably lit themselves on fire. We live in a world where glazed kettle corn no longer exists because people can't follow large red warning stickers about not opening it until it cools.
