You’re a cock. A wonderful, shining cock. You are absolutely wonderful. Glorious. The chicks all love you. A dapper Dan. King of the pen. You’re the best. Beak of the beaks. No-one is as handsome as you. No one is as sure as you.   Things go your way. The perfect strut. Your confidence unwavering.   You have such unimaginably rich detailing in your impossibly magnificent plumage. A perfect cock.

Now, I don’t mean to give you droop, but next to the Argus pheasant, the Brazilian macaw, the rainbow lory, the Indian blue pea fowl and the Victoria crowned pigeon, aren’t you just very normal? Amongst the wonderful creatures of flight to befriend at the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, we notice one cock, normally outstandingly amazing, rolling like a normal Norman.  But I in no way want to demean you, cock. You are fabulous. There’s just so much to see.

The incredible beauty, wonder and diversity of the exotic birds here is breathtaking. To the point of tears. How can such fantastic, artistic and intelligent expressions of nature result from exploding stardust?

From swirling gas in a black vacuum billions of years ago. To this. Feathers. Tails. Red and black zebra stripes. Beaks. Horns. Giraffe skin leggings. Knobbly knees. Fancy head-pieces. Hair-do’s. Dances. Eyes. Brains. Unimaginable hearing ability over hundreds of miles. Imitations of human voices. Little claws. Big claws. Dinosaurs. Colour-schemes that match. Mental colour-schemes. Lovers kissing and fussing. Nests. Waddles. Wings. Flight! I repeat, flight! You’re a miracle; little, feathered friend. And I am in complete awe. Thank you.

We leave the Bird Park and the first human we see is a beer-bellied, gentleman of the street. An oddball. He has a peculiarly, fastidious laundry regime by the monitor-lizard-filled storm-canal where he has built his home. Collette and I stare at the tramp across the water. He has a hair-do. He has a perfectly white vest. Fresh blue jeans. Box-fresh sports socks. Slip-on, brown, leather shoes. We don’t admire him but we respect his bizarre method of expression in this jungle. A man on his own frontier. Sleeping inside a self-made curtain on a concrete ledge amongst the graffiti in the city gutter.

In this jungle-in-the-jungle, the variety and uniqueness of nature’s intelligence is very present.   The melting pot is complex. Every living thing I see is so amazing. Every soul is the result of time, growth, feelings, sensations, guesses, risks, comfort, fear, love, quirk, history, lineage, immensity and something supernatural. Every thing, here today, is at the frontier of miracle manifestation. Every living thing is nature’s best expression of existence. Everything we see now has been billions of years in the unfolding. We are exactly as we should be.

But, there is a responsibility. As far as we know, everything on this planet is the finest articulation of the greatest magic ever conceivable. The chain of miracles that has resulted in today’s-us can not be fathomed. We are nature. The latest design. The pressing edge of the cosmos. Based on this information, surely we must be respectful of what it has taken us to get here. We must show gratitude.  And we must be prepared to lead ourselves and lead each other towards what is right and what is good.

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light…The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life…To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
CARL SAGAN

Thanks for reading.
Pete