'The Velveteen Rabbit' Scared Me as a Child

So... little, wooden birds... I've been finding them but, for some reason, there is a dreaful preoccupation with little, wooden ducks. It is as if there is really no reason to make any other sort of bird out of wood except ducks-- and not simply decoy ducks, mind, but ducks in general. And, if not simply that, then, well, basically waterfowl. Maybe there is something about a wooden hummingbird that just does not mesh with the average person's sensibilities. I'll not know, I'll not delve. The mystery is the art of life and, on the great gastronomic scale of things, solving the riddle of the little, wooden ducks is hovering somewhere between generic maccaroni & cheese and soydogs.

Yes, today, life is beautiful for the delicate and trite mystery of the little, wooden ducks and, in general, waterfowl.

And, were I to come across a life-size, wooden albatross, I would, I like to believe, hang it from the living room ceiling of every place I might ever live. But you never ask about it-- or, well, at least, not too seriously. It is well enough that it is free of termites and suspended by strong cables.

Aside, as a kid ignorant of those philosophies that delved into such things, I fancied that all things, even manufactured things, were possessed of a soul. It made the world rich and it made materialism fatally sorrowful, the throwing away of so many things with soul, and purpose, and emotions. Although rather emancipated from this idea by now, I was fiddling with it on my quest for more little, wooden birds today. I pondered the meaning of things. For example, if this thing was made to be used like this and, when used like this, its purpose is to make people happy, then to use it in any other way would be to deny it of its destiny. Being an inanimate thing, bereft of mobility and sense, it is incumbent upon the owner to use it properly so that it fulfills its manufactured destiny.

So, if the purpose of a little, wooden bird is to serve one particular function, to use it for anything else would be tantamount to sin-- the murder of purpose. To sidestep this, we could posit with the same conviction or proof, that the mere creation of the little, wooden bird is, in fact, its purpose and that any use thereafter is moot because its purpose was, simply, its creation. But I am sentimental and ridiculous and there will be, for several reasons (mostly pragmatic), two separate groups of little, wooden birds. That and I spent a good deal of time looking for the group that will not, as it were, 'get it'.