Lame Duck wandered into the watering hole and was given the opportunity to tell the congregation of mixed creatures what he had been up to and what they could learn or benefit from his tales. As it turns out the Lame Duck had prepared for the event and had a suitcase full of tricks to last him two hours and 15 minutes. Since it was the annual “Birds of a Feather Flock Together” anniversary, Lame Duck fearlessly began his performance with his own version of “Lamentations” where he blamed practically everything he could on his arch enemy, the miniature black swan named “Broken Neck.”
In response, Broken Neck’s brood posted on FarceBook: “Really Lame Duck? It’s still my fault after 5 years? – WOW!”
Aside from his excruciatingly long “show & blame” narrative, Lame Duck attempted to show what a clever clod he was, by criticizing other people but not saying their names or personal details. This way his victims might have second thoughts about answering back since Lame Duck had resorted to using the Blind Item tactic in hitting them. By not naming names, Lame Duck’s fine weather friends may have also hoped to reduce the backfire about Lame Duck being incurably vindictive and vengeful aside from publicly preening himself.
So off he went starting with all the bad things “Broken Neck” had done five years ago and then some. To be fair, Lame Duck also included some reality to his tales about how his part of the pond is so much richer and how so many of the once migratory and opportunistic birds were staying and feeding longer on the pond. How so many local and foreign varieties have been lining their nests locally and how the big fish have been contributing to the collection of the game warden named Kim. Yes, Lame Duck was so proud telling tales that it sounded like he wanted to have a statue and status equivalent to what the Singaporeans have dedicated to their founding father Lee Kwan Yew. That of course won’t be possible since a lot of dissatisfied pigeons and sparrows with No Permanent Address and who can’t come near the watering hole might decide to poop on Lame Duck statue or not.
As Lame Duck carried on with his UTI causing self-love story, it slowly began to become apparent that he was throwing in a few curved balls with a very different twist. For instance he never once talked about the 44 Suddenly Annihilated Fowl or SAF 44 who were shot and killed as if it was hunting season, yet he praised several of the Ostriches in his entourage who bury their head in incompetence. Then he talked about visiting the “Basang Sisiws” in a town in the Visayas and claimed that the Congressman and the Mayor refused to meet him and sent the Vice Mayor and the City Administrator instead. It puzzled some people in the audience and some owls started hooting “Who?” “Who?”
I suppose Lame Duck never figured that there was something common to Ducks, Quacks and People, it’s called: “Google.”
So Google it, I did. When you search: President – snubbed – Visayas/ Yolanda, what comes out is a series of stories from mainstream media about a certain President who reportedly snubbed local officials with the surname “Romualdez.” Lame Duck was either throwing a curved ball, got his facts mixed up as to who snubbed who or he was titillating his audience with a fictional story which is why he did not name names just like gossip columnists do.
Blurting out blind items must have been really fun for Lame Duck because he kept on doing the same and shared how he and his crew needed to retrofit or rehabilitate a very old passage called “Guadalupe.” But in order to do this, Lame Duck’s Minions needed to build a new one that would cross the Pasig River from Ma-kati and would land at the nesting place of Wild Geese called “Pugad Kapitolyo” which the ducks call Barrio Kapitolyo. In his tale, Lame Duck claims that the Wild Geese had no wish of being bothered and refused to let the ducks build the bridge, period!
Well, either Lame Duck was misled or is being misleading. When Lame Duck’s Ugly Ducklings came to Pugad Kapitolyo, they were there to inform God’s creatures great and small that the Grand Oompah Babes had given instruction to build a bridge and that it should continue cutting through the nesting place called Kapitolyo in the form of a skyway and beyond. No one spoke of the need to retrofit “Guadalupe.” No one had shared bread crumbs or flapped wings with the affected group before telling them that their nesting place would soon be turned into a smoke emitting furnace fueled by thousands of cars every hour.
And it seems that Lame Duck was also not told by his ugly ducklings that a suggestion had been made not to block the bridge but to re-direct it in order to save hundreds of millions for Lame Duck’s Empire of the Birds while preserving the peace and tranquility of “Pugad Kapitolyo.”
Apparently no one has updated Lame Duck that the local Mayor of the Wild Geese had talked to representatives of the ADB (Asiatic Development Birds?) so the bridge could push through but one that would only be for BRTs (Bird Rapid Transit), while the ADB engineered and funded a smaller project that would turn “Pugad Kapitolyo” into a proto-type Mini Singapore, integrate it with Capitol Commons and be a showcase that could be copied by barangays, town and cities towards the slow redevelopment of communities all over Birdland!
So why am I writing this fish and bird story instead of just telling it like it is? Well, I really found Lame Duck’s style amusing and what better way than to play them than at their own game. That’s a lot better than joining them in their favorite past time: Pin the Blame on the Donkey!
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Email: utalk2ctalk@gmail.com