“It looks like you had a prong shot in the dark,” said the blackbird to the bramble berry who was uncomfortably perched. It was ripe, black and shone in the sun as it rocked back and forth in the breeze. “You cannot be on a very good briar!” he pointed out from his comfortable apple tree branch.
“Ah, well it is because I am not in fine nettle after last night’s winds. I seem to have a thorn in the side at present.”
“Well sorry, it was a bumpy ride last night,” remarked the bramble bush with not only a prong stuck in its leaf from the battering he was subjected to by the aforementioned gales but he also had one of his thorns lodged into his supporting fence and it held him prisoner in a firm manner from which there was no resistance. His final insult to injury though was the sprinkling of blackberry fur all over his leaves, which itched worse than nettle rash and he had experienced enough of that having self-cultivated himself in the biggest bunch of fine nettles ever known.
The Bramble moved gently in the wind groaning and moaning from the thorny problems.
“OK, I get the point,” said the blackbird with his tongue in his beak and he flew down off the apple tree branch to plonk most indelicately onto the bramble.
This crash landing whooshed the blackberry fur off the leaves and dislodged the two thorns so it killed two thorns with one bird as well as making a clean sweep of the leaves.
The blackbird was satisfied with his work and flew back onto the Apple tree. He looked back at the relieved bramble and the comfortable blackberry and said to the former, “Don’t worry, nothing lasts forever. After all you’ll have no room to be picky soon when the fruit has gone and no body comes to chat to you because your leaves will have whispered their last farewell as they blow away to foreign destinations – namely the compost heap.”
The blackberry, who had just been dislodged from a most uncomfortable thorny problem with his side, shuddered at the thought of leaving his current comfy zone even though it got a little thorny at this time of the year with all the swaying in the wind. Even the leaves fluttered in the breeze and the shuddering and fluttering almost unseated the blackberry. Had it not been for the quick thinking of the blackbird the fruit would have had a premature landing; and it would have been in an uncomfortable bed because the nettles were waving below in the fresh breeze.
“Look, you will soon be ripe and then it will be time for you to serve a better purpose than sitting there sun ripening yourself all day.” The blackbird had resisted the temptation to devour the fruit even though the taste was delectable as he just brushed the blackberry back onto his perch. The blackberry shuddered again but was balanced enough not to require a supporting beak.
As silence descended the blackbird squawked to fill it and flew off to perch on a nearby chimney pot in order to spend the next ten minutes gossiping up the street about his eventful and fruitful day.
