Two little birds

On my zai bush, filled these days with white fragrant flowers, I came upon the following:

Nest with two tiny birds, a polka-dotted butterfly, a chameleon, a lizard at night, two frogs, tiny insects, a moth, one fat firefly, a small wasp hive.

It's not a bush anymore, more like a teeming chawl with everyone existing higgledy-piggledy one on top of the other.

The tiny brown-and-cream birds with thin curved beaks, who are the original inhabitants of the bush, look very unhappy as they flit to and fro.

One day the little papa bird cries: 'Oh how crowded it's getting in here. And so noisy. How I miss the early days when there was nothing but the two of us and the fragrance of zai. Life was so sweet then.'

'Alas!' the little mama bird sighs. 'Life is not a bed of zai flowers. I can't sleep a wink anymore. If it's not the firefly flashing its vulgar green light in my face, it's the frogs keeping me up with their ghastly croaking. Momo dearest, why not give singing lessons to the frogs?'

'Teach a frog how to sing?' the papa bird cries enraged. 'What kind of a birdbrain do you take me for? I might as well teach a pig how to fly.'

'All this low life around us,' the mama bird muses. 'What will happen to our babies when they're born I can't help thinking. They might get bitten by a wasp, poor sweet things. Or witness a snake eating a frog.'

'A bird's eye view they'll get of all the violence,' the papa bird cries.

'Oh what shall we do?' the mama bird sobs. 'This bush is no place to bring up baby birds.'

'Let's migrate to the city!'

'But will there be worms for us to eat there?'

'Worms! No one eats worms in the city. We'll eat caviar!'

'And watch movies at the drive-in!'

'And sit on taxicabs and buses!'

'Oh what fun. Let's flee,' cries the mama bird.

'Let's fly,' cries the papa bird.

And so the brave little birds leave the zai bush and fly far away to the big bad city where one night they are hit by a drunken driver on a motorcycle which crashes into the wall in whose crack they have made a nest and they die instantly.

But maybe that's not how the story ends.