The Stupid F#@king Bird!

Landy came home last night from work in a state, you can always tell when Landy's mood shifts by the black cloud that follows overhead. After the boys went to bed I asked him what was wrong.

"I had a rough day"
"How so?"
"Well it really all started with this Stupid Fucking Bird."

Not something that you would generally expect to hear when recounting a bad day!
Landy proceeded to tell me how a bird had turned a seemingly normal day into one that he would term as rough.

When Landy was driving into work a bird had tried to fly across the road between the vehicle in front of him and himself. When Landy saw the bird attempt the dangerous flight he remembers clenching his stomach and hoping the bird would make it across, as though his stomach muscles would give the bird that little bit extra it may need. As it turned out the bird, realizing it would not make it across, tried to fly up and over Landy's truck and instead smacked into it right above the windshield. After the initial loud thud the bird proceeded to tumble down the length of the truck making hauntingly smaller thuds the whole way down. Landy looked into the rearview mirror to see the bird spiral up and then plummet down into the ditch at the side of the road. As he witnessed the birds final moments he uttered the words "Stupid Fucking Bird."

At home, on the back deck, he recalled the story to me, I quietly said, "looks like that bird won't make it home," there was a moment of silence to which Landy responded "yep that is exactly what I thought and that is when I changed my thinking to Poor Fucking Bird."
"Do you think we have more empathy because of the losses we have experienced?" I asked Landy, I really wanted to know, because I myself found it difficult to not be affected by seeing any living creature harmed or killed, bird or animal.
"I don't know, I think I have always felt this way," Landy added.
"I know I have not always been this way," I concluded aloud,"I may have never thought twice about the animal that lay dead at the side of the road, or the turtle slowly heading into traffic or the goose with the goslings eating the grass next to the curb of the four lane highway. But now I fret for the turtle that may not make it across or worry about the goose if one of the goslings tumbles into traffic, I wonder if they experience loss."
"Stupid Fucking Bird" was all that Landy uttered.
Maybe he was right, better to not add to the list of loss on our plate and hope that it was only a Stupid Fucking Bird.