A Calvinist's sneaky suspicions

When this mangy grackle hopped up early Sunday morning, he looked like he'd just suffered one monstrous Saturday night. Around the feeder, grackles don't take much from anybody else. When they show up, often in gangs, sparrows and finches clear the heck out. This guy looks like he met his match in some seedy dive, doesn't he? Must have been some weekend.

Maybe he was just back from Vegas. His chest looked like a bad pillow.

Don't be so quick to judge, I told myself. Maybe the poor guy is a kid who's just molting. I googled "molting grackles" and found a thousand great shots of grackle teenagers, none of them featuring anything like this mess. Still, the errant feathers are brownish, aren't they?--which may mean he's just singing the puberty blues. 

Nah. Look at the way he has to work to keep those spindly legs of his beneath him. He's still unsteady the morning after. It was just a long, bad night on the town. The wages of sin and all of that.

But then, I know ton of adolescents have been in the neighborhood. You can't miss 'em because grackles spoil their kids rotten. Whole families glide up together. Mom scours the ground, the kids squawking, shamelessly out of control. They're as big as she is and she jams seeds down their screaming throats as if they were still in diapers. It's embarrassing. 

Seriously, here I was making him a carouser, and there could be another explanation. Maybe the poor kid is just suffering throbbing hormones and the turmoil adolescence really is. You know. Maybe that mess of feathers is just grackle acne.

Be nice, I told myself. Show a little grace. You're just being the kind of Calvinist H. L. Mencken skewered so famously: "Calvinism [maybe it was Puritanism--no matter] is the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere is having a good time." 

Look at him. How'd you like to look like that on Sunday morning?

I just don't know. Take your pick: he's either a Sunday School lesson in how nothing good ever happens after twelve, or some poor grackle kid in puberty. I'm not sure what's worse.

Then again, maybe he's a she. 

Don't even go there.