Eating Forks

The pigeon was trying to eat a fork. Try as it might, though, he couldn’t quite fathom how it was to be done. He’d tried all sorts to make it pallatable. He’d tried pecking, he’d tried shaking, he’d broken the plastic down into tiny pieces. Still, he continued to try though, unswayed in his task.

The other pigeons scoffed, of course, and returned to their crumbs. But he wouldn’t be perturbed, he was going to eat the fork. They didn’t understand, they couldn’t understand. Only he had found the human book, with the page titled Eating Habits. “In most cultures, it is customary to eat forks”, it read. Soon he too would be eating as humans ate, and the other pigeons wouldn’t scoff any more, they’d be in awe. They’d apologise, and tell him how right he’d been, and they too would be eating forks.

Of course, the pigeon wasn’t to know, he couldn’t have known, that before the page he’d found had gotten torn, it had read something quite different. He wasn’t to know, he couldn’t have known, that it once said “In most cultures, it is customary to eat using knives and forks.”