Once upon a time
There was a mother eagle
Sitting on her nest
Bumpy with eggs,
Who dropped off.
As mothers do.
While she was asleep
A crafty cuckoo crept
under her broody feathers
And shoved and pushed
And elbowed
and crawled out again..
When her three eggs hatched,
two
Were bald and handsome,
But one had a bright yellow crest
Like a cuckoo..
Two chicks grew and left,
But the third..
Oh dear.
The third,
Sprawled in the nest, took up all the room, and wouldn’t budge.
It wanted food and attention and scratching behind the ears and if it didn’t get it
It tweeted.
A lot.
She learned to stroke it
And soothe it
And bite its worms up into little short pieces so it could digest them.
But one day, when the chick had worn her out,
She fell asleep again,
On the edge of the nest,
And dropped off.
And nothing ended happily ever after.
