Blue Bird in the Cuppa Life

/ moragnoffke

Over Easter we had a wonderful holiday spending time with our family (Derek’s siblings included). We hired some cottages on the eastern coast and it was a heavenly place called Lake Pleasant. We enjoyed a lot of time together but we also had time to ourselves. This is when I wrote this little story. We had very patchy WI-FI so I didn’t get to post it.

Painting by Sue Crowsen.

Blue Bird in the Cuppa Life

Ceru was a cerulean coloured Cordon bleu finch who lived in a courtyard in the center of a built up suburb. There was a leafy evergreen tree in the middle that offered shade to travelers and locals under its wide welcoming branches. There was a trail of people who came to the local café called The Cuppa Life. Ceru lived in the grand tree and spent most of his days there eavesdropping on delectable tidbits of conversations. He collected many stories from the townspeople and travelers alike. Only it really felt like there was little time to practice his new songs which he had been crafting as he spent his time hopping around under the tables looking for crumbs to eat.  

One evening, when everyone had left, Ceru flew down to one of the tables and sat on a pretty floral cup holding a posy of flowers. Each table had a cup of flowers with its own unique colour. His cup was cerulean blue. He said to himself, “Nobody is around, I’ll practice my new songs, I’ll sing as loudly as I like and whatever I want.” As he was singing his new inspired songs the local Fat Cat came up from behind and pounced on Ceru and gobbled him up: so much for The Cuppa Life, or who’s cup of life was it?  

A cat on our travels, 2013
Cordon bleu finch, Moorings, Zambia. Photo by Derek Noffke.

I am using my travel photos for my illustration.

This story is a comment about society, social systems and who really benefits. That’s all I am going to say.

Take care,

17 thoughts on “Blue Bird in the Cuppa Life”

  1. Oh my! That ending snuck up on me! Life in all its fierceness, yes?
    I’ve been enjoying watching the webcam from the University of Berkeley… Where two baby peregrine hawks are growing. Watching the adults bring them food…. usually other birds…. makes me meditate on the circle of life.
    And then, of course, there’s the other fat cat piece of the world that you refer to.
    And then the unspeakably tragic scenes, where innocent children are killed. Unfathomable.
    Such thoughts… Triggered by a story of a bluebird…!
    ( Hello, Morag!)
    Life….. Beautiful, fierce, tragic, bittersweet….. And we keep dancing……

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    • Yes quite right, there is such sadness and pain. It is often unexpected, hard to fathom and unimaginably tragic. Thank you for your wonderful message. I will check out the peregrines. Sounds delightful. We rescued a fledgling bird not so long ago, unfortunately it had been disturbed by the installation of our Irrigation system. We felt bad. It had run into our driveway. So we put it on the garden side of our flat. We watched the parents find it and feed it but it couldn’t fly yet. I was convinced it would die in our winter cold but it survived day after day. It’s a long story, our cats chased it, I caught the cats, and day after day it had another chance at life and eventually it was singing its juvenile warble… Then I knew it was flying. All the way through those two weeks I knew it might happen that it would be caught and killed … And that is life. I guess we might feel out of control when things don’t go as expected but we eventually have to accept it. It sounds very philosophical but the trauma of these unbelievable things do eat me up when I dwell on them too much… We do have to keep dancing! Cheers

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  3. What a surprising twist in your story! Your metaphor of life is very true. Just when things are rolling along smoothly, we get blindsided by something that we least expected. Who’s cup of life was it? Indeed!! Well done Morag!

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    • Thank you, the story surprised me too. It had a life of its own. I guess I like to think and feel that everything ends happily but unfortunately there are bullies and powerful people who do what they like… Sometimes taking advantage of vulnerable people. We all need to drink deep from the cup of Life 😉🙋‍♀️

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  4. That was really a sad story of Ceru. But life is like this, totally unpredictable. Thank you for sharing your holiday experience and lovely pictures too.

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