fight or flight

i’m so tired of people comparing hearts to birds. what, you think just because wing-beat and heart-beat both end with beat that makes them remotely the same?
my heart doesn’t beat like a bird. my heart beats like a cricket bat, beats like a fist to the face, beats like getting hit by a car on the highways. my heart is not a bird.
and another thing. why birds? what pure beautiful creatures of nature to compare my beautiful pure heart to? what made you think birds are nice anyway? you want to hear some bird facts? great blue herons use that long beak and strikingly elegant neck to spear right though fish. beat that.
peregrine falcons strike their prey with a closed foot, punch it down at three hundred kilometres per hour. beat that.
shrikes don’t even have talons but they make do anyway, impaling their meals on anything sharp they can find. beat that.
cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of smaller birds, leaving their young to be raised by the parents of weaker nestmates, nestmates that they will kill by stealing all of their food and letting them starve. beat that.
even chickens, the fluffy little yellow cute ones, they’ll happily eat their own eggs if they break. beat that. (not the eggs.)
you know what? on second thought, maybe my heart is a bird after all.