btw it has achieved the million signatures but! it will be audited to ascertain their veracity, and apparently needs a 100k cushion to make sure it goes through. so keep slogging through the stupidity and keep the signatures coming!

My parents saw this subliminally 28 years ago U_U

Is this your bird? I have no idea <3

why are you like this?

This has DEFINITELY happened before. Not on purpose, but there are multiple studies out there about Which Leg Bands Are The Most Fuckable 😂

I know that it has been done unintentionally. That is somewhat the grounds on which I was contemplating whether it could be done intentionally. I didn't just randomly and unpromptedly assume that there are accessories that make a male bird irresistible to the female ones, I was aware that this is a thing that can happen before I started wondering whether it could be used intentionally.

Many domesticated or captive bird species are housed in groups so maybe SOME savvy breeder has taken advantage of it. It might not be the most scientifically ethical thing to manipulate wild bird populations, though. But I mean, if someone were to try it out with feral pigeons it would probably be fine.

Re-domesticating feral pigeons and selectively breeding them to be the size of ducks.

Alternatively breed them to the size of a mouse or a hummingbird, imagine the terror of a horde of thousands of pigeons smaller than your hand watching you eat french fries

My.god. you're hired.

And I’m watching the video like “whoaaaa what’s it going to be! woodpecker? red-headed woodpecker? eastern whip-poor-will? northern mockingbird? it’s a Bachman's sparrow? oh, okay. neat.”

I feel like I need to show you a Bachman’s sparrow for this post to truly land.

Oooooh the most bird ever.

omg this is so me my favourite bird is the short-toed treecreeper and.

like. yea...

I’m sorry to admit this and I would never do it in real life because I have an immense respect for wildlife and specifically the delicate nature of birds. That is the most grabbable animal I have ever seen. It looks free for the taking.

have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS

sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

there was once a little boy.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.

and he did not just keep the duckie shirt either

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

Ok but this is how to teach history. This is how you get people to pay attention, to care. Find something small and make it personal, then zoom out to the wider context. History is best taught as a story, with people who lived their lives in ways that came together to create something remarkable that we still talk about today, but who were still just human at the end of the day. They kissed, argued, cried, and dreamed just like we do. And sometimes they really liked ducks.