Cuckoo

Odd, that. That I never noticed till now how different Roscoe looked. Like an entirely different species, in fact. And I just thought he was, well, different. "Cuckoo" is what they call them, I think.

Mom tried to treat everyone equally, at first. I'm sure she did. But Roscoe always seemed to have his beak in first and widest, to have a strategically placed wing in his neighbor's face, to have a super-sized butt between everyone else and the food. From first memory, he was always a little bigger, a little stronger, a little more aggressive.

Daisy was the first to peep up.

"Hey, how about giving the rest of us a shot at the grub, you greedy pig?" she snapped.

"You're greedy!" screamed Roscoe. "Look at how greedy she is! Mom, Daisy is being greedy!"

"Share with your siblings, Daisy," chirped Mom softly. "Everyone gets the same."

"Then how come Roscoe is so fat, and the rest of us are skin and feathers?" protested Daisy.

"You're fat!" burped Roscoe between swallows. "You guys see how fat she's getting?"

The next day, Daisy was gone. None of us were fledged yet, so she must have fallen from the next during the night. No one had seen the tragic accident.

Donald was next.

"Roscoe is getting more than his fair share," complained Donald.

"Squawk!" squawked Roscoe. "He wants to redistribute the food! Oh! Oh! He's trying to steal my food!"

"How come it's all your food?" replied Donald. "We're all siblings in the same nest with the same mother feeding us. You're just pushier."

"You're pushy!" Roscoe snapped back. "Mom, do you see how pushy he is? Sniff, sniff."

"Now, you boys get along, hear?" said Mom. "Donald, don't be so pushy."

Donald was gone the next day. Then the pecking began. Huey was the first to show significant trauma from Roscoe's supposedly errant, but on-target beak.

"Huey needs help," peeped Dewey. "He's not getting enough nourishment to combat his ... accidental injuries."

"We can't afford to give handouts in these trying times!" Roscoe cut in quickly. "What happened to personal responsibility? I sympathize, sniff, sniff, but Huey has to shift for himself." And Roscoe speared another mouthful of food that had been headed for the invalid Huey.

"We've had enough of your bullying, Roscoe!" warned Dewey.

"You're a bully!" whined Roscoe. "Mom! Dewey is bullying me! Wah!"

"Why can't you all get along?" sighed Mom. She seemed to be getting very tired. "Dewey, don't be such a bully."

Dewey disappeared that night, and Huey expired the following day. That left Louie and me, and we could see how this was going.

I had a plan. Louie and I began to feed ourselves. We snagged whatever was available: errant little winged things, anything that crawled too close to the nest, anything we could find in the nest twigs that looked arguably organic. It was working, too. Until Roscoe figured out what we were doing, and why we were too strong for him to bully.

"Oh! Oh!" howled Roscoe. "Help, Mom! Help! Look at what they're doing!"

"What, Dear?" replied Mom. "What are they doing?"

"They're feeding themselves, Mom!" whined Roscoe. "Cutting you, and more importantly me, out of the picture!"

"Well, bully for them," said Mom. "That shows initiative and self-reliance."

"Well, um, of course, I see that," tacked Roscoe. "And I totally admire it! But it's unsustainable, you see. They don't have the wisdom or the expertise to keep it up! But I can fix it for them, because I am the expert on food. Here's what we'll do. We'll take all that food that they're carelessly consuming and run it through me! I will manage it sensibly so that there will be enough, both now and in the future."

"Gosh, you make a lot of sense," said Mom.

"No!" cried Louis and I as one. "Roscoe is just pissed because he can't bully us and because he suspects that, somewhere, there's a grain of food that has escaped his gut."

"Oh! Oh!" wailed Roscoe. "See how they're bullying me! And they said a bad word, which is way worse than committing mayhem and murder!"

"Roscoe is right," said Mom. And the starvation resumed.

Louie disappeared in a week. Roscoe doesn't even pretend anymore. He just sent Mom off with a "Yo, bitch! Get me some grub!"

And now it's my turn.