[Some of these photos are not suitable for sensitive adults.
Children are usually okay with them.]
Children are usually okay with them.]
Deidre, our beloved handicapped pink plastic flamingo...
R.I.P.
R.I.P.
Dear Ones...
It is a sad, sad day here at Dragonfly Cottage. Deidre, our beloved legless pink flamingo has passed away after only 2 summers here in our blistering coastal heat. Some of the others are looking a little the worse for the wear, but Deidre is our first to actually pass away and it is a terrible blow. Summer is hard on all of us here with temps in excess of 100 degrees with the heat index, as it was yesterday, 110 degrees, and humidity so bad your glasses fog up as soon as you step out the door causing you, very likely, to walk into a tree or a wall of the house, or perhaps dead into your car whose windows will fog so badly you will have to wait until winter when things cool a bit to drive it, but if you are plastic (clucking and shaking head) summers are especially hard on you. Most of the flamingos have been here hundreds of years and live back in The Wild Flamingo Wood. I daren't get close enough to even take a photo but here is one that was taken in the 1800's. You can tell by the fence.
Nobody messes with them and they don't bother us as long as we don't get too close to the fence line. Their beaks are so long a pug almost lost his near non-existent nose when he got about a foot away and one of the females, rather fierce as she was protecting a brood of pink plastic babies at the time, reached through the fence and went for the nose. If the poor pug had had any nose to speak of he would have lost it.
We are trying to figure out how best to dispose of Deidre and while we would like to bury her in the pug cemetery with it's charming pink picket fence, she's plastic and we are, after all, environmentally concerned. Go ahead and laugh. I bet you've never had to put a beloved companion in the recycling bin. (Shaking head sadly...)
Poor Deidre can't be buried here...
Of course the roosters couldn't care less. They have never deigned to associate with the flamingos and as far as they are concerned (... roosters are more hard-hearted than one might imagine, shocking really...) a few melted flamingos would suit them just fine. Do you see, they show no sadness or remorse at all, not even the youngsters, which I find shocking, to say the least...
One must expect losses in this heat I suppose and the only one who doesn't mind is Alfred, the flying fish, because the humidity is so thick he can swim in it...
Alfred, shockingly unsympathetic, but he's a cold-blooded
creature, after all (though one might imagine luke-warm in
these southern climes...)...
I myself am worn out by it all. It has been a tragic loss and quite a depressing day. I shall now go wrap poor Deidre lovingly in plastic grocery bags and put her in the recycling bin. I won't even try to imagine what will happen to her once they pick her up. I just won't let my mind go there.
I hope it's cooler where you are. Keep your flamingos safe. They are with us such a short time...
...in mourning.
