Yesterday's Mistakes

We saw a sparrow foetus in the pub. In the garden, by the hedge. Some people were screwfacing away from it and some people were, having heard about it, sprinting towards it. It fast became a must-see foetus. And I don't know if it was a sparrow or not, but sparrow foetus sounds a lot better than boring old non-specific bird foetus. And if it's not a sparrow then it must be something like a brown shrieker, lesser privet bellower, or beige nuisance, which are the three species most commonly spotted in that hedge, from the nearby tables, at which we've all spent entire months drinking oceans of booze a pint at a time, listening to the high-speed metallic quarrelling of these birds without ever finding out their proper names or what it is that makes them so angry. Maybe it's that we'd been ignoring their foetuses. No more. It lay in the sun with a crowd exuding scrutiny at it, pointing out each feature with a my god or a fucking hell, eyes, gob, hands, are those hands, they're not sposed to have hands, while the other crowd, a few yards away, groaned as it heard each new detail, and became a support group for people who didn't anticipate this kind of thing landing in their Sunday roast, especially if they'd opted for the chicken. We love nature.