Before the Time of Birds

Many millennia ago, before the time of humans and mammals, before the time in which birds took to the air, there was a day, perhaps a Tuesday, when the first slug-like creatures emerged from the ocean and brought animal life to the surface of the Earth for the first time. There were actually just to two of them. The smaller slug was the younger brother and was tagging along mainly to be a pest. He did not yet conceive of the enormity of this brother’s bold action.

They struggled mightily to adjust to breaths of oxygen and struggled even more to move upon the face of the Earth. All of this struggling made them rather hungry actually and so history was in for another dose of the incredible on this momentous Tuesday. The larger of the two sloshed his body up to a leaf and took a small bite of this new form of nourishment. From this he learned two things. The first is that poison ivy itches, and the second was the discovery of a new taste.

The younger in awe of his brother’s feets spoke in hopes of edification. “What’s it like? Huh? Tell me? What’s it like?”

The other brother, now knowing that he would be forever remembered as a great explorer, and also noting that he would be further distinguished from the common slug since they did not garner the rash that he now had, spoke the words that would forever be carved into the history of the planet, “Tastes a lot like chicken.”

The lesson that we can learn from this that the word came before the animal or its egg. We call that bird a chicken simply because he tastes like one. Oh by the way, I believe that the name of that first slug was in fact Covfefe.