by EVP
At a farm's southwestern corner, in a small poplar tree, a new mother robin peacefully sat on her clutch of six eggs while her mate perched and watched over from the highest branch of the tree. It had been a few weeks since they had built and subsequently populated the nest, but neither was sure how exactly long it had been. Since that time, only once had they both left the nest unattended, and that was simply to fend off an annoying male cowbird. "Dear," the mother called to her mate, "I think one is hatching!" The father flew down to the nest and they both watched expectantly. One of the eggs, conspicuous in how it was not blue and speckled like the others, shook a little bit and began to break open. Shortly, there was a wet new chick, the first among the six, quietly nestled below its mother. The other eggs remained quiet. After a few hours, the chick had dried to a soft, downy coat. It poked it's head out from under the warmth of its mother and looked up at her. "Um…are you my mom?" it asked. "Ah, you're awake!" the delighted new mother exclaimed. "Yes, I certainly am, my child. And as my first child your father and I have decided to call you Wendy." "Hmmm…" replied the young chick. "Great name. Where's dad now?" "Oh, he's at the top of the tree. Do you want to meet him?" "Well," Wendy replied, "if he's just hanging around, maybe he could get some food somewhere. I'm starving." The mother smiled at her new daughter and called to her mate, "Dear, would you get something for our little girl to eat?" As the male robin took flight, Wendy called to him, "Yeah! And get the lead out, would you? I'm starving here!" And she popped her head back under her mother. First MealA few minutes later the male returned with a long, fat earthworm. Wendy poked her head out, beak widely outstretched, and her father lovingly placed the writhing worm in her mouth. Wendy sucked it down into her gullet, and re-opened her mouth expectantly. After a moment she closed it and looked in disappointment at her father. "What? Is that it? One lousy earthworm? I'm a growing bird here!" she exclaimed pointing at herself with stubby new wings, "I need to eat! Ya think you can come up with something a little more substantial?" As she concluded, Wendy glared at the new father until he looked away somewhat embarrassed. The mother sighed and looked at her husband with a smile. "Well…I suppose they said it would be like this." The new father flew off in search of more food wondering what it would be like when all the others were demanding food like that. He couldn't quite remember how many siblings there would be, all told, but he knew that the work was just beginning. For the next day and a half, the small bird voraciously ate everything the father could bring to her. Earthworms, caterpillars, grubs, and bugs, all greedily consumed with complete abandon. And each load brought out more complaints about the near famine from the miniscule amounts of food being delivered by the father's labor. A Full NestAt the end of the second day, the other eggs began to hatch. Wendy found herself with five new siblings, each about two-thirds her size. Her two-day jump on the others had allowed her to substantially outsize her brethren. The advantage was clear: Wendy managed to consume about three times as much as her siblings. She always had the largest mouth, the longest reach and the greediest appetite. She also had the biggest belly, relative to body size. By the end of the week, both parents were working sunup to sundown to collect and distribute food to the hungry mob. Wendy constituted a full third of their labors, and she sometimes would consume an entire load that had been brought back for the group. Still, each run was never enough, and Wendy constantly griped about the quality of service, the inadequate portions, and the excessive length of time between feedings, despite that they were happening every five minutes. One day, while both parents were out foraging, Wendy realized that although she was getting hungrier each day, so were her siblings. Even though she now was twice the size of the others (much of that size being her distended belly), and although she out-competed them miserably, they were still taking up at least half of the arriving food. Since the parents were producing at full capacity, she reasoned, the bigger portions that she craved were logistically impossible under the given circumstances. Something had to be done to reduce the number of mouths. The two parents arrived at the same time at the next feeding, and Wendy managed to hog the father's entire take, while the mother carefully divvied her smaller amount between the other five chicks. And therein Wendy saw the solution: population control. There really was no other way. ControlAs both parents flew from the nest on another run, Wendy looked over the side of the nest and gasped in mock surprise, jumping away from the edge and ducking down low. "I think there's a cat down there!" she lied. Her five siblings crept to the edge of the nest and peered down, searching the ground below. "Where?" said one. "I don't see anything," stated another. "Is it in that bush?" asked a third. "What's a cat?" said the fourth. The fifth bird never really said anything. He was too busy getting stuffed down Wendy's throat. She swallowed him with a struggle, pushing his fat body into her stretching beak and barely getting him all the way down before the others gave up on finding the cat and turned back around. They turned back to Wendy complaining that they didn't see any cat. They were constantly surprised at how much bigger than them their sister was, and now more than ever. Her belly seemed big enough around to fit one of them completely inside of it. And where was Harold? they wondered. But they the arrival of their parents--and the latest round of food--distracted them. They all crowded over to the edge of the nest to struggle for their cut of the bounty. All, but two: Harold was strangely absent, and Wendy was, for the first time since she had hatched, feeling a bit full. "Wendy," her mother said, "aren't you going to eat?" "Um…not right now. I'll pass on this round," she said, patting her immense belly. "Anyone seen Harold?" The parents searched for the missing chick for a time, but after the others explained that he must have fallen out of the nest when they were looking for the cat, the parents sadly gave up and got back to the important task of feeding their growing young birds. A Growing BirdThat night, the mother robin marveled at how fast her brood was growing. She could not completely cover them all any more, and it took both her and her mate to keep the nest warm. The next day, Wendy found that the reduction in mouths worked out to her benefit very well. Rations were once again large and she found that she did not need to crack the verbal whip on the parents nearly as much. Still, she did not want them to get lazy, so she chimed in with an occasional quip like "Is it hungry around here, or is it just me," or "Are you just staring at us because you like to watch us starve? Go get food!" But within a couple days, now that she had tripled the size of her fellow nestlings, she was once again feeling the strain of too many mouths. That night, under the cover of her parents, she slowly and quietly gulped down another of her sleeping nest mates, stretching her fat, round belly to extents beyond any previous she had known. The others were all so big now, that she found herself barely able to breath with one inside of her. Still, the next morning she forced herself to eat as much as she could, in spite of her tightly stretched stomach, just so her parents would not be clued in to the source of their latest loss. Wendy took up a third of the nest herself now, and it was no small nest. When the parents brought back more food, she rotated on her massive abdomen to always arrive open mouthed before her siblings could. She choked down whatever she could, and kept eating in spite of the complaints of her three remaining siblings. "Wendy's just a little ahead of you," their mother would explain as Wendy noisily slurped, gulped and gobbled the newly arrived bounty. "She was hatched first. She can't help it if she's hungry." But the parents were failing to notice the truth: Although Wendy was hatched two days earlier, her size—and girth—was way beyond where the others would be in two days. In fact, they could never reach her size: she was a little larger than the parents. Her three siblings regarded their hulking sibling with a certain amount of caution and distrust. And Then There Were NoneAfter another few days, Wendy was again faced with unsatisfactory proportions at each feeding. The parents' were just not getting enough back to the nest, despite her ongoing badgering them about their poor performance. Another sibling would have to go. In fact, she rather liked the idea and she felt hungrier at just the thought. They were the most satisfying meals she had had so far. "I bet you I could take down two of these guys," she secretly conspired. "Maybe." As both parents flew off again, she once again tried the cat trick, nearly tipping the nest off the limb when she was at its edge. The trick was worked like a charm: in a huge gulp she choked down one of the three distracted siblings, and had a second in her voracious maw when the third turned around. "I don't think there's really any cat down—" and he gasped as he saw Wendy's gigantic form with a fat nestling body half way down her throat. Wendy gulped hard, but the space in her belly allowed only very slow progress in getting the second sibling down. "Oh my god! What are you doing?" Wendy managed to finish her swallowing, and her belly stretched monstrously before her. "Um…really…it's not what you think," she explained, trying not to smile with delight at her fullness. "You swallowed your own sister!" "No, she saw the cat and jumped back and went into my mouth. You gotta help me get her out of there! Quick! She'll suffocate! The gullible bird hopped to attention and quickly clambered up Wendy's widely stretched gut and looked down Wendy's deep, dark mouth. "Can you see her in there?" Wendy asked. "No, I need to look a little closer." "Well, do so!" said Wendy and she stuffed the final sibling into her mouth. As he writhed and kicked and struggled, Wendy bounced his backside against a limb and she swallowed him in fits and spurts. As she finished getting him down, she thought she would asphyxiate, it took so long for her to finish the job. "Ugh…so full!" Wendy sat back with her enormous, three-chick-full belly spread out before here. "No more competition. Food aplenty from here out." At that point, the parents arrived, and to their dismay, found only one immensely round Wendy bird, where just a little earlier there had been four hungry nestlings. "Oh, thank god you're >burp!< back!" exclaimed Wendy, "It was horrible! A huge hawk came down and snatched up the others. He would have taken >hic< me too, but fortunately he couldn't lift me along with the others!" She collapsed sobbing into her mother's wings. "There, there," comforted her saddened mother, "At least I still have my big baby. My first born. I'm so glad you eat so well, so it couldn't take you away, too." "Yeah…" Wendy answered, "Speaking of, whadja >urpf< bring me this >hic< time?" For the rest of the day, Wendy ate and ate from the bounty of nourishment her two parents continuously brought her. She was stuffed to the brim, and expanded out to fill the whole nest. Life was good and Wendy was proud of her big belly. Father Tastes BestThree days of constant feeding went by, and Wendy was eating unstoppably. Wendy's vast girth now filled the entire nest beyond capacity. At night, her mother still tried to keep her warm, but could cover only a small area of Wendy's great belly. Wendy was many times the mother's size. Small primary feathers had filled out her wings and she was clearly no longer a baby chick, but her appetite went on unabated. No meal could match that of the one she made of her last three siblings. She constantly harangued the parents for more and more, but they were no longer able to keep up. "You call this a meal? I'm wasting away! Starving! Look at me!" she exclaimed surveying her monstrous gut, "I'm skin and bones! Go!" she said as she shooed her exhausted hosts from the nest. Her mother was ever-trusting and ever-loving, but her father just didn't seem to have the same motivation as before. He provided less food with decreasing frequency. It appeared he was beginning to resent her ever-increasing demand for food. One day, when he returned he finally snapped. Wendy was berating the miniscule portion of food he had retrieved, when he suddenly jumped on her belly and came beak to beak with her. "You unappreciative, overgrown, fat slob! When are you going to start practicing to fly? When I was your age…" Wendy had seen this coming, and had thought about how to handle it. She had no idea that the opportunity would make itself so easy. Her mother was out collecting food, so while her father was jawing at her, right down in her face, she simply opened her now cavernous beak and shoved him in with her sparsely feathered wings. He went down much more easily than the last of her siblings, but it was still a heroic swallow to stomach him completely. He squirmed within her briefly, and she patted her belly appreciating the feeling of such a lively meal. Mother returned, landing atop Wendy's great belly, and fed her further
for the afternoon. Wendy once again felt full and fairly happy. "WCB" is © its creator,
EVP. |