The brownish-yellow shirts men assembled under an umbrella-shaped tree. Here, a crowd of white-bearded men quarrelled, while the wind flogged the barbed-thorn branches on their baldheads. Between the thorny branches, bee-eaters protested that the meeting was irritating the chicks.
Even the cup-shaped nests swayed in the wind, dizzying the temperamental men. Instantly, a woodpecker landed on a dancing branch, and tapped the hardened wood. Meanwhile, a spoonbill bird knocking on the wood interrupted the meeting. “Let’s discuss the salty water,” said a bald-headed man.
“This bitter water will finish the cows,” sang a wild sparrow. “The animals will finish the water,” sang a chatting bird. Uncle Sam knocked his cane on the log after eavesdropping on the singing birds’ alert. Immediately, the birds chirped noisily, spurring the men to block their ears with wrinkled hands. The birds were chirping because a swarm of bees had joined the tree.
Afterwards, an army of red bees stormed the black bees. Luckily, Uncle John, who was snorting like a pig, absorbed the deafening buzzes. Meanwhile, Uncle Manuel yawned before a bird’s watery poo rained into his mouth. Manuel twisted around, praying that nobody had seen this, and zipped his poo-dripping lips. Instantly, the tickling giggles and thought-provoking chuckles stirred him to spew the salty poo out of his mouth.
Later, Uncle Sam tumbled over and cursed the termite-infested log on which he was sitting after it broke into pieces. Suddenly, a venomous bee stings his bottom lip. The chairman nodded, and added his swollen lips to the agenda. Sam appointed himself as the headman, but his puffed lips blocked his stuttering tongue. Minutes later, a playful boy sang that a cow’s shadow had slipped into the water. In retort, the meeting paused, and the missing teeth men quarrelled over who’ll spot the drowning shadow. The boy chuckled, hinting that it was a prank, but nobody listened.
The birdwatching men searched for the missing shadow, while the alarming birds called the women to come out of the grass-roof huts. Thereafter, the womenfolk numbered the multi-coloured birds. Instantly, a baby choked on her milky saliva, before pointing at a green mamba slithering out of the woodpecker’s hole.
The meeting abruptly ended when a windstorm uprooted the 500-year-old tree and scattered the nests on the ground. Up to this day, blue, green and yellow feathers had fossilised into colourful rocks under the fallen tree.