Real Life Angry Birds

My brother Trevor is a great story teller. Not only does he always have a story to tell, but he tells it really well. At every family gathering, he will share with us one of his latest adventures. I've shared one of his stories before. Click the link to read about the time one of his buddies got stabbed in a bar. I know it doesn't sound like it, but it's a very funny story.

With Friends Like These...

This is one of Trevor's stories. Just like the one in the bar, I was not present for the events. I only got to hear about them after the fact. I will do my best to recall the story as I heard it.

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A few years ago, an acquaintance of Trevor's invited him and some of his buddies to a Sunday afternoon barbecue. While they were trying to decide if they had anything better going on that day, the host drops another detail about the party.  

"We will be having ostrich!"

"An ostrich barbecue? Count us in!"

It's not every day you get to eat ostrich and normally, if you do get the opportunity, it is just a taste. This is one of those opportunities you don't want to pass up. The chance to go to an ostrich barbecue doesn't come along very often.

The following weekend, Trevor and his buddies left early to make sure they could find the place since they had never been there before. They arrived about an hour early and the host was happy to see them. He said he needed help getting ready and he didn't have the ostrich yet. They all piled in the back of his truck and took off.

The host drove them to a barn in the middle of nowhere. Trevor asked, "What are we doing here?" He was told, "This is where the ostrich is." Trevor then realized that the meal for the day was still alive. This day just kept getting more interesting.

They opened up a gate to the pasture and drove the truck in. After driving around several acres, they finally saw the large bird off in the distance. Their host handed a .22 rifle to the guys in back of the truck and told them to shoot it when they drove close enough. He also told them that it had to be shot in the head. A body shot would not kill it. One of the guys happily grabbed the rifle to be the one to get the shot, but soon realized this was not an easy feat.

As the truck got closer, the ostrich ran off and the driver accelerated. The truck gave chase as the driver yelled for him to shoot as he pulled up along side the ostrich. Unfortunately, the ostrich didn't allow for that. As the truck would catch up and start to pull to one side, the ostrich would turn away from it as the driver screamed, "SHOOT!"

The shooter was having some problems. Ostriches can run up to about 40 MPH. They were standing in the back of a fast-moving truck driving on unpaved ground, chasing a bird that is darting back and forth, while having to aim at a part of it's body that isn't much bigger than a tennis ball. The rifle got passed around as they all took their shots.

Eventually, one of them got lucky and the bird went down. The driver stopped quickly, jumped out and cut off the head with a machete. Ostriches react much in the same way as chickens when their heads are removed, except in this case, the flopping bird could kill you if you got too close.

Once it settled down, they all grabbed on to throw it into the back of the truck. However, this was 300 pounds of dead weight. They couldn't get a decent grip on it. Every time they tried to pick it up, they were only successful on the sides. They couldn't get the bulk of it off the ground. They couldn't even roll it in.

By this time, they had been out for over an hour. People would be showing up at the BBQ by now expecting to eat. The host was getting anxious to get moving. He dug some chains out from behind the seat and secured them to the bird's feet and the other end to the bumper of his truck. He said if they could get it to the barn, they could come up with something to get it in the truck. They were over a half mile out in the pasture, but they drug that ostrich all the way.

Once they got to barn, they tried setting up boards on the tailgate to roll it in and several other methods. Nothing seemed to work. Eventually, they threw a rope over one of the rafters in the barn and used the truck to lift the bird into the air. They secured the rope and then drove the truck underneath and lowered it back down.

With the ostrich finally in the truck, they triumphantly made their way back to the party. They discovered that many people had arrived and started the celebration without them. The scheduled time had passed over two hours before then and they hadn't even cleaned and butchered the bird yet. Several people jumped in to help to get the meat started, but it was a slow process. Most of the people left before the first pieces came off.

Trevor and his friends stuck around. After all the work they had put into getting it here, they weren't about to miss out. Plus, they were covered in ostrich blood and figured this might be the only place where that look would be acceptable.

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After Trevor finished his story, I asked him what he thought of ostrich meat. His reply was simple.

"It tastes like chicken."

Learning Curve

After spending over an hour staring at my keyboard trying to figure out what to write today, I started perusing the archives of my blog. I lost track of the fact that I was supposed to be writing and started playing with all the settings and tools in Blogger. I've looked at all these before, but I learned a few new things.

I figured out how to back up my blog. I've always heard this was a good idea in case crazed zombie hordes attack the Blogger servers, but had never done it. So I downloaded the entire content of my blog. I didn't want to just have it on my hard drive, so I uploaded another copy to my online storage at Google Drive. I don't really know if that was a good idea since both Drive and Blogger are powered by Google, but I figure if Google ever goes down, the world is probably seconds away from implosion anyway…so, it's not really going to matter.

Once I felt that Blogger wasn't entertaining me anymore, I moved on and stumbled upon how to embed individual tweets into a blog post.

What if all the people who danced with signs to advertise stores went on strike? That would be the best picket line ever?
— Brett Minor (@brettminor) September 24, 2012

"Get off your high horse!" - Veterinarian who prescribed medical marijuana.
— Brett Minor (@brettminor) September 18, 2012

I had to throw these in simply because I learned how to do it. Apparently, this is a pretty simple process, but I never knew about it because no one told me and I missed the press release. Also, Twitter never sends me letters to introduce their new features. Consider this your warning that my next several posts will probably have tweets interspersed in them. And if you're not already a Twitter follower, now's a good time to do it.

After playing with my new Twitter toy for a while, I wandered over to Google Analytics to see what search terms are leading people to my site. Here are some of the stranger ones.

jackass whisperer

All of the guys on Jackass are pretty loud except when they are whispering to the camera about how they are about to strip someone naked, throw him onto a bus of nuns and then hold the doors shut while they throw snakes in the windows. To my knowledge, I have never discussed these things on my blog, so I don't understand how it brings them to my site, but I welcome the traffic. Although, I am curious to try an experiment. Here is the cast list for the most common Jackass characters: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn, Chris Pontius, Steve-O, Preston Lacy, Brandon DiCamillo. Let's see if that influences my search results.

angry turkey
I briefly mentioned my Angry Birds addiction several months ago and turkeys are birds, so I guess this works. Plus, most turkeys I have seen appear to be angry, but I would be angry too if I was a bird who couldn't fly and is basically only good for being eaten.

when i miss you i re-read our old conversations and smile like an idiot
This one actually popped up several times with just slight variations. I do often re-read my old posts because I think I'm brilliant and it does make me smile like an idiot, but I had no idea Google knew that. These search engines are getting spookily powerful. I am getting the red squiggly lines under the word 'spookily', but I know what I am trying to say and I believe that's the best word - even if spell check says it's not a word.

karate vs taekwondo
I hope the person searching this found his answer when he got here. I don't remember writing about either one.

no outside food
This one I have no problem with. People shouldn't be eating while reading my posts. It's just rude.

butcher clown

Click picture for
clown butcher post

This one is kind of creepy. Not only because someone would be searching for this one to begin with, but also the fact that I actually have a picture of a butcher clown on my site.

naked redheads   
I don't know what I wrote that caused this search to lead people to my blog, but I could get behind this one.
 
amputee cheerleader
I have written about my buddy Adam several times. He is an amputee, but I believe the person coming to my blog hoping to satisfy their strange fetish is greatly disappointed when they find his picture. Although, if there's a market for it, maybe I should put Adam in a short skirt and we could start a website.

Kicking Addiction by Going Cold (Angry) Turkey

I have just entered the last week of my adolescent development class and only have a few assignments left to do. They are the biggest assignments for the course, but I can't seem to concentrate and get them completed. I want to do my homework, but I can't. I blame Mark Zuckerberg's recent decision to partner with Rovio Games. Their partnership allowed Angry Birds to be included in the apps now available on Facebook.

The pigs stole 3 eggs.
You have sacrificed your entire flock.
Who is really the winner here?

I don't know how long it has been available to play, but I discovered it three days ago and installed it immediately. I had played it a few times on other people's phones, but since I don't have a smartphone, I hadn't really put any time into it. I knew how fun it was, so I had to have it. Since installing it three days ago, I have logged 63.7 hours of game play.

I have not been getting my homework done, getting enough sleep or eating properly. After playing for half the night, when I got up to take my daughter to school this morning I felt more guilt than Whitney Houston's pharmacist.

When I arrived back home I deleted the game and blocked the app from appearing on my Facebook in the future. I had to get this darkness out of my life. I always heard fun and addicting this game was and they were right. As soon as I hit my first pig, I was hooked. It only took one. One time and I belonged to that slingshot. I didn't even have to use it for a while for it to build up in my system. It was immediate.

This bird poops out an egg the same size as his body.
No wonder he is willing to kill himself.

On those occasions that I absolutely had to leave my computer, I couldn't stop thinking of ways to destroy that last pig or get more points on the levels that I only had 1 or 2 stars. When I went to sleep I heard pigs laughing at me and was haunted by the "WEEEEE" of overhead birds about to crash through my poorly constructed ice roof. That stupid song was continuously ringing in my ears. I couldn't get away from any of it, but also couldn't wait to score another hit.

Knowing that I couldn't do this alone, I called a friend who had successfully walked away a few months ago. When I told him what I had done, he was deeply empathic. He reminded me that he had warned me to stay away from it. I thought I was strong enough. I could dabble with it and not get hooked. It was just for fun and could put it down anytime I wanted to. Besides, all my friends were doing it. I should have known better.

He made me agree to call him if I began to feel tempted. I have done alright so far, but it is just the first day. I hear it gets harder about day three. I need to find a support group. Pray for me.