The importance of being an older brother

Here in Rochester, as in any city, we have more than what we feel is our fair share of crime. Which is to say that on any given mornings drive in to work there is a 75% chance that I will hear of someone who has been shot, stabbed, killed, or forced to run around downtown in nothing but a pair of stockings. These occurrences need to be curtailed immediately. Not only are they highly detrimental to the health of the recipient of said activity but there are other consequences that are only now coming to light.

You see I am an older brother. The eldest of four in fact. Now as an older brother I, like all older brothers, have heard many times that my younger brothers would do the things that I did and this has been proven to be more or less true. Use foul language and my brothers would follow suit, lie to my parents about my report card and before long mom and dad weren't getting any good information, and even when I started losing my hair... Yep. What I did not realize is that the entire animal kingdom appears to work via the same principle.

Humanity is of course at the top of the food chain. We are in effect the older brothers and Sisters to the rest of the species in the animal kingdom and this means that we have a responsibility to demonstrate to the animal kingdom the correct way to act. Thus far it hasn't been going so well. We seam to be killing each other off left and right through more means than I care to think about and the animal kingdom has been watching. It started with the upper level carnivores. You know things like lions, tigers, sharks, and of course penguins. But lessons in bad behavior never seam to stop with the first jump. It invariably trickles down to the youngest and smallest member if the situation is not remedied. Which brings me to today’s events.

You see I was sitting at work looking out one of the larger windows and bore witness to a rather disturbing scene. Some of the service men who work in our building like to throw out bread crumbs for the birds and other critters who like to eat bread crumbs in order to fuel their mid afternoon car bombing raids. And since I have always suffered from a serious case of A.D.D. I was immediately distracted by a small cute furry object hopping around the bread crumbs picking out choice morsels. Ordinarily a single squirrel eating some bread would not have caught my interest but in a matter of seconds there were four or five squirrels all hoping around happily eating bread. Then it began.

The first crow arrived on the scene after I had been watching for two minutes. Then a second. Then a third. I could see the squirrels pulling together in the center of the crumbs their tiny clawed fists grasping as many crumbs as they could carry. The first crow took a couple quick hops toward the center of the bread pile nipped at a crumb then jumped back. The second crow followed suit. The first crow hopped in again and from a branch up above a squirrel dropped and fell directly on top of the crow with what I imagine was a rather loud thud and sqwak. In a flurry the crows were off and circling.

The squirrels were now grabbing fistfuls of bread and staring wearily at the sky. A tense minute past and the crows were back on the ground. Screaming at the squirrels. The squirrels pulled together in the middle and began to advance on the crows. I watched in amazement as rather heated words were exchanged and then out came the knives.

To relate what happened next I haven't got the heart but I will say that it did not end well for any involved and as is often the case there are now several families out there who are grief stricken tonight at the loss of their loved ones. And so I politely ask on behalf of the Mothers and Fathers out there in the squirrel and crow community that we as the older brothers and sisters of the animal kingdom pay attention to the example that we are setting and stop the violence.