Wednesday, May the 5th, 2004

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Once Upon a Time

You dressed so fine. You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? Well no, you didn't. You should have. Mister Compton at the Tweezer Factory told you to, but you ignored him. You did worse than ignore him. You tipped his hat off his head and trod on it until it was crushed. And what did you do then? You kicked the crushed hat into the gutter, with a sneer on your lips. And, oh! how that sneer disfigured your face. It was an ugly sneer, and made of you an ugly person, something nobody had recognised until then. You, who had won the hearts of a multitude through your good works in the field of bird welfare, you who had cradled crows in your arms, who had nursed an injured starling through three long days and nights, who had fed droplets of rainwater to a hummingbird, who so delicately brushed the feathers of an ostrich which had food poisoning, you whose eyes lit up with glee when a flock of little bitterns soared across the blue, blue sky, you—the so-called “Cassowary Man”… for you to betray the faith so many had in you, to reveal your sinful heart by kicking Mister Compton's crushed hat into the gutter, and not just any gutter, but a foul, filthy, stinking gutter, greasy with slime… for you to do that shocked us all. Now you languish in a prison cell, accused of feckless acts and nincompoopery, and Mister Compton lies buried in a distant windswept graveyard. Oh Cassowary Man, Cassowary Man… we can never forgive you.