Bird Feeder

Here's how advertising works: Today I'm watching these tiny winter-looking goldfinches clinging crazily to the bird feeder sock outside my office window and then suddenly...I'm thinking about Valentine's Day! Hold on, brain, what happened? 

That, my friends, is the genius of promotional advertising. It slyly encourages connections between seemingly disparate things so that our brain starts believing it makes sense to lump them together. But a tube bird feeder and Valentines? Feeding birds and heart-shaped candy?  It took a minute, but I figured out the connection: love.  Love, it turns out, can connect anything to ANYthing even birds and a schmaltzy Hallmark holiday.

Starting with 'birds' and ending up at Valentine's Day was a bit of a leap so I began to free-associate: 'the birds and the bees,' lovey-dovey, love birds -- aha!  Then I needed to know more. Are 'love birds' real? What about lovey dove-ys and Great Blue Herons, are they really lifelong partners? I was in a Google-ing frenzy trying to find an adorable, love story about birds to share with you during this annual faux holiday commemoration. All I found, though, were pages upon pages of informative facts. Paragraphs ad nauseum explaining "one of nine species of the genus Agapornis (Greek: αγάπη agape 'love'; όρνις ornis 'bird')"etc., etc. Is it possible that bird reporters have never watched a Lifetime movie?

Once upon a time an exceptionally fine Dad invented the Mr. Canary® Finch Feeder. With that silly little thistle feeder, he taught his kids the biggest lesson of life: everything is connected to everything, no exceptions. "Even birds and love," they'd ask. "No exceptions," he'd reply.