Unhappy Little Girls With Birds In Western Art History

by Mallory Ortberg · February 4, 2016

bird1

I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE
PLEASE UNDERSTAND

 

bird2

i have nothing else to say to you, Erich

 

bird3

if I could I’d kill you twice

 

bird4

chickens aren’t everything, you know

 

bird5

oh
i see you’re all
still here

 

bird6

in my own way, I am content

 

bird7

keep moving, fuckos

 

bird8

this is the Parrot of Sorrow

 

bird9

Clara has everything and all I have is my hate for Clara

[Images via and via]

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

126 Comments

    2. j_bird +11

      If I was stuffed into that monstrosity of a dress at the age of six, I would be contemplating murder too.

    1. editorialeyes +64

      Especially Canada Geese. Except you have to add a “…please” after “fuckos.”

      1. Nashirakins +24

        I had to brave a flock of geese to reach the courthouse, when I got married. Scariest day of my liiiiife.

        1. editorialeyes +32

          This was blocking my path last year. I dodged into traffic to cross the street because that was safer.

        2. evieskye +19

          A bunch of classmates and I were late to swim class in college because a hoard of geese were on the lawn in front of the door, hissing aggressively. Horrifying.

      2. Ethylbenzene +24

        We had to have a special health and safety stand down and staff meeting about the geese at one of my job sites because of what assholes they are.

      3. LadyPoopjokes +88

        I discovered after moving to Colorado this year that apparently Colorado is the place geese are going when they fly south, which is weird, because if I were a goose on vacation I’d fly a hell of a lot further south than this, but whatever.

        Anyway, point is, it’s like goose spring break here right now. There are thousands of them in my town and they just plop down their massive flocks wherever they want and hang out and don’t move for anything, not people trying to use the sidewalks (which are for people, you shitty birds, go hang out in the sky), or cars trying to use the streets, or anything. I sat in a backed-up drive-through for a good ten minutes waiting for geese to stop partying in it so the line could move.

        What I thought was going to be the best part of it turned out to be a disappointment, when I was at the Denver Zoo and the goose equivalent of a party bus rolled up and plopped down in the enclosures of some very carnivorous animals and the situation completely failed to turn into a bloodbath, and then they just started honking around in the human part of the zoo and not letting me get to the red pandas, the dicks.

        Anyway, fuck geese, fuck all birds larger than crows (except penguins, which would probably never bother a soul, and maybe raptors, which seem ok), I wish my cat were bigger so she could take all her murderous instincts out on the emu that attacked me seven years ago instead of all the cute nice songbirds.

        1. editorialeyes +52

          I honestly can’t decide which part of this is my favourite, but I think it’s “If I were a goose on vacation.”

          Geese are self-assured AF. They will brook no carnage from tigers. They will eat your children.

          2. aurorabirdialis +28

            That is precisely why I like them. Nobody fucks with a goose. They’re chill AF if left to their own devices, but if you come at a goose, you best believe they’ll come back at you twice as hard and then some to teach you a lesson.

          3. editorialeyes +61

            I was a the zoo a few years ago and everywhere we went, we came across the same family with just incredibly badly behaved, spoiled kids. Eventually in the picnic area, there they were. The 6ish year old son approached a nearby Canada goose and wound up a very telegraphed kick at the bird. Parents just sort of half-watching, not doing anything. Not gon lie, my party were like

            Goose turned and hissed and came at him, bro, and it was great. Didn’t HURT the child, I’m not a monster, but the scream/fall/scrabble away was sheer delight. I hope lessons were learned that day.

          4. aurorabirdialis +34

            That gif reaction is my everything right now. Legit cackle. Little fucker deserves it if he’s trying to kick a damn goose who’s minding its own business.

            I’ve been around geese a lot, from working at camp and from visiting lakes and ponds and such where they were congregating. If you respect the goose, the goose respects you back.

          6. LadyPoopjokes +9

            It’s possible that I just hate them because I’m jealous. It would be pretty good to be a goose.

        2. Orla +12

          The garden of my parents’ house is close to a wild fowl sanctuary. The sanctuary is one of the places Canadian geese like to go on their winter holidays.

          Canadian geese are nation-defyingly impolite. Brent Geese are the only fowl I have ever seen who could put manners on the massive pigeon (we call him Brando because he’s the Godfather) who usually scares any other type of bird away from the feeder in their garden. He has even been known to scare herons away.

          Mind you, when they’re out there, NOTHING wants to go into the garden.

          So, yeah, I feel your pain, there were 2,000 of them in the sanctuary over the winter.

          1. LadyPoopjokes +38

            Yeah! So, some friends and I went to this zoo in China (super nice for a Chinese zoo, actually one of the nicest zoos I’ve ever seen, it was really more of a wildlife park with long winding trails between all the rolling fields full of exotic animals) and we were making our way toward the panda region, as one does, and the last stretch of trail before transcendent panda bliss passed through this sort of woodsy area where for some reason instead of any kind of fence they just had not-fence, and the whole trail was just full of very, very un-scared-of-people emus and musk deer.

            We got all excited at first, because yay, animals, and the musk deer really were very polite and nice and tiny and cute, no complaints there, and the emus were as tall as me with tiny horrible reptile heads, and one sort of separated me from my pack and stared me down (I feel like it may have been interested in my lip ring, or just in general violence), and it started getting way close to my face until I suddenly felt the urgent need to put my sunglasses on my face instead of my forehead, so I did, which was an excellent idea because my sunglasses got pecked instead of MY FUCKING EYES.

            And then I just sort of curled up in a tiny ball while my friend, the huge musclebound frat-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold-who-happened-to-be-a-zoology-major-and-also-general-bird-expert chased it back into the woods.

            And then right after that I got very close to some pandas, which helped.

          2. Bothari +11

            Okay, I am really sorry you had to go through that (but I am in awe of your swift eyeball instincts; good job), but I am grateful that we got that story out of it.

            Down with not-fences and tiny horrible reptile heads! Hooray for sunglasses and heart-of-gold frat boys!

        4. Scintillatingest +33

          Ugh, seriously, geese everywhere in Denver right now. My favorite was the time my husband and I were at the zoo watching a goose help himself to all of the porcupine chow (which, respect), and a small child asked his mom what it was. She looked around for a placard and there wasn’t one (because “freeloading geese” isn’t a thing the zoo feels it has to advertise, I guess), so she shrugged and said, “It’s a swan, honey.”

          Well, that was it. My husband and I had to book it on out of there before we died laughing, and everything else we saw that day was a swan. And fully half of them were outside of their enclosures!

      4. ladyimogen +22

        One time my little brother and I were walking on the beach and we sat down to admire some Canada geese and they came over and started eating his hair. It was amazing, and they were complete fuckos.

      1. adoptraya +51

        True story time:

        My family used to live by the coast, and on Sundays, we’d go walking on a lovely boardwalk. There were often swans there, and people would stop and feed them.

        Once, when my little sister was three, she was riding her new tricycle along the boardwalk. She had cycled ahead of the rest of us when she encountered a huge swan. He flew up out of the ocean and onto the boardwalk and started CHASING her. She turned that wee trike around and pedaled as fast as her chubby legs could pedal back to the family. Imagine being a parent and seeing your pig-tailed little daughter come booking it trike style pursued by a swan with it’s wings all flapping and neck all extended and hissing.

        It was probably horrifying at the time, but it’s hilarious to recall now.

        But yeah. Swans are dicks.

        1. fcjaugusta +13

          I probably shouldn’t have children, because I’m imagining being the parent in that situation and my kid would probably get death by swan before I would be able to stop laughing.

      2. dorianneemmerton +14

        A swan bit me when I was a little girl! We were at Stratford (Ontario) to see theatre (the reason people go to Stratford) and I was feeding the water fowl in the Avon River and the greedy greedy swan couldn’t handle that the ducks and geese were getting anything, so he came right up and BIT MY HAND.

        The Canada Geese are shit birds, but so are pigeons. I’ll take some shit on the sidewalk over a bleeding little girl’s hand any day!

        2. x934z +5

          I saw a goose bite a woman’s arse in London when she wasn’t feeding it and the 700000 other beaked scroungers fast enough.

      1. FeuerroteZora +5

        There was a wild turkey in my area that was hitting cars for a while.

        Yep. The turkey was hitting cars. Not the other way around.

        I heard about this because I totalled my car and needed a rental, and the guy at the rental place said “You get hit by the turkey too?” Apparently at least three customers in the past weeks had a wild turkey basically fling itself at their car and run away. That right there is a bad-ass bird.

        1. aurorabirdialis +45

          MAYBE I AM. WHAT OF IT?

          Actually for serious the first summer I worked at Girl Scout camp, there were two nesting pairs on the lake at camp and the building I worked in was right down on the water. I spent a lot of time watching them and learned a LOT about their habits, and I was respectful of their space so they never tried to menace me. They’re actually really cool animals–the summer before, those two nesting pairs had been on that same lake, but all their goslings had died (mostly predation). So that summer, they did what’s called gang parenting–they had their clutches separately, but they parented together, and even though there were obviously more young to look after, there were twice as many parents to keep an eye out for things that wanted to eat them, so all but like 3 of the young made it to adulthood. 
          Plus, when they’re traveling, if one bird goes down (injury, sickness) then a couple birds will also drop out of formation and go down with that bird until they’re able to rejoin the flock or until they die. Nobody gets left behind when you’re a goose, and geese won’t take shit from anyone. There’s just something I sincerely admire about that.

          1. celery +15

            Yes yes yes, I love geese so much, partly because of how aggressive they are to everyone. In my apartment complex last spring, we had a bunch of geese, and there was one big gaggle of several parents and all their children, and then there was one couple that was going solo with just one gosling. And watching those parents with their one baby was ADORABLE. The tiny fluffy baby would be toddling down the middle of the sidewalk, happy as can be, with both parents standing behind it a few feet–far enough away to give their little baby some independence, but close enough that they could menace anything that dared to look wrong at their bundle of joy.

            I stopped to take a picture of the gosling once, from what I thought was a safe distance, and when I looked up, one of the parents was barreling towards me and hissing. Good parents.

          3. Anna +9

            Wawa means goose! Run down and treat yourself to a turkey hoagie, kill two birds with one stone.

  4. jenvega +73

    True story: I killed a baby duck with my bare hands when I was four. DON’T FUCK WITH ME.

    I now realize I should hire an artist to commit a re-creation of this moment to canvas.

    1. GingerHawk +43

      I once stepped on a baby robin that had fallen out of its nest. This happened just after I’d had an argument with my mother, and I was fuming in anger as I stomped over to the neighbors’ house for . . . some reason. I don’t recall. But I still carry the guilt of killing that bird.

      1. mydonkeyfeet +29

        Stop! That was just a morality tale you spun. Just an internet fable. Not real, no baby robin has ever died at all. It says so on Snopes. No more!

    2. VioletandIrises +30

      I want to see the craigslist ad for the casting of the duck-killing toddler. Please.

    3. LadyPoopjokes +10

      Please, please commission this. I’d offer to do it myself pro bono, but that wouldn’t actually be a nice gesture because I can’t actually paint.

  5. zachariahary +152

    The Parrot of Sorrow, the Mourning Dove of Melancholy, the Plover of Ennui.
    All are important members in my Aviary of Despair.

    2. Either_Ada +59

      The Blue Jay of Impotent Rage, the Wren of Futile Activity, the Crow of Vengeful Memory, the Pigeon of Anomie…….

          1. Thujaplicata +32

            Potoo of “I shouldn’t have read the comments”

            (Toast comments not included under the Potoo, of course)

      2. projectbeks +32

        the Wren of Futile Activity
        I’ll have you know I did PLENTY OF THINGS TODAY that were totally not futile at all HARRUMPH

      1. builtahouse +5

        I have found this comic now, thanks to you, I can blame/thank you for my muffled cry-laughing at my desk.

  6. fenixdawn +37

    The companion piece to this is “Small children inexplicably strangling birds in classical/neoclassical sculpture.” That subject shows up way more than one would think.

  7. logicbutton +69

    “Keep Moving, Fuckos” could, with minor tweaks, become a painting of me and my cat when I see her sniffing around a part of the carpet she likes to pee on.

  8. praemunire +19

    Look at that scrimmager in the background of the last one, though.

    (Also, “fucko.” The only place besides the Toast where I have ever heard anyone use that expression is the classic 80s buddy action comedy “Midnight Run.” Is this a word people actually use, and I’ve been missing out all along?)

    2. Chance_Hale +16

      The eternal question: is “bucko” a bowlderization of “fucko”, or is “fucko” a dirtification of “bucko”?

  10. VioletandIrises +76

    “In my own way, I am content” made me very sad for a moment and then I scrolled down and saw “keep moving, fuckos,” and laughed out loud. Only The Toast can cause these emotional swings…

  11. irishbreakfasttime +68

    aaaaah so my uncle has an enormous reproduction of the last painting here, and I spent so many hours as a kid staring at it going “what is the deal, what are they wearing, are they real or are they dolls?” while the grownups were talking. (it was a very horror-inducingly impressive painting when it was above the fireplace in his big house with dramatic lighting on it, now it’s on the wall of his tiny assisted-living apartment and is all out of proportion in both size and fancy-ness, this makes it less terrifying, like saying riddikulus to a boggart.)

    1. RLT +24

      Wow. Have you ever asked him about it? Will you ask him now? Has Clara always been such a goddamned B?

      1. irishbreakfasttime +21

        They’re the children of, iirc, the king of Spain. Clara’s entitled to that attitude.

        1. x934z +4

          Yes, if she’s the Clara I think she is, she’s Phillip II’s daughter and became Regent of the Spanish Netherlands – she’s got the right to Attitude.

    3. GingerHawk +51

      They’re dolls and the hoops of their skirts are the rib bones of the children they replaced.

    4. EmpressofBland +23

      Did you ever hear them asking you to come into the painting and play with them forever?

  12. jennycieplak +49

    I enjoyed that the painter of the Parrot of Sorrow just had absolutely no idea how to paint feet. With shoes, without shoes, he just couldn’t deal.

  13. Momthra +24

    I wholeheartedly agree. Birds are disgusting. I am revolted by soft animals with hard parts.

  15. Owlmouse +36

    As a former bird owner, all I could think about for Parrot of Sorrow was how an accurate painting would have included white streaks all over her arm and dress.

    2. Tamara +2

      And a little speech bubble with a ton of bleeped out words. My granda used to have a parrot like that and it swore like a sailor.

  16. aqwaplop +108

    This is an opportunity to share my favorite list in the whole wide world, a list of antiquated and extremely specific verbs used when slicing up certain birds/fish for serving at a meal. For example, if you’re speaking properly, you don’t just “filet” a bird, you have to: display a quail unbrace a mallard lift a swan spoil a hen Many verb/animal pairs read as delightful nonsense like something out of Jabberwocky:trench a sturgeon frush a chub scull a tench splay a breamI hope this didn’t turn out too tall. Thank you for reading my favorite list in the world.

    4. LadyPoopjokes +25

      I think maybe my procrastinational activity for the day should be splicing together this list with the list of collective nouns for animals, so we all know that, for instance, one must unbrace a brace of mallards.

      Yes, I think this will definitely be a productive use of my time.

      1. alder_tree +8

        I would read it and link it everywhere if you did.

        eta: I love your username more than is appropriate

        1. LadyPoopjokes +20

          So, I realized this isn’t even procrastination really, since it sort of fits into my job duties, so I mentioned it to my boss and we might commission some artwork based on the idea, which would be awesome and I will totally let you know if it ends up happening, but in the meantime I went ahead and made a list (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_ter…) and now I’m actually pretty excited about this so I’ll probably keep researching. Anyway, list:

          unjoint a sedge/sege of bitterns
          sauce a mews of capons
          fract a brood/clutch/peep of chickens
          unlatch a herd of curlews
          transon a bed/swarm of eels
          rear a flock/gaggle of geese
          break a down/drove/flick/husk of hares
          spoil/dismember a brood of hens
          unbrace a flush/puddling/sord/suit/sute of mallards
          wing a covey of partridges
          disfigure a muster/ostentation/pride of peacocks
          allay a bouquet/head/nest/nide/nye of pheasants
          mince a congregation/stand/wing of plovers
          display a bevy/covey/drift of quails
          chine a bind/draught/run of salmon
          lift a bevy/drift/eyrar/flight/game/herd/lamentation/sownder/team/whiting of swans
          why are there so many swan words
          gobbet/culpon a hover of trout
          thigh a fall of woodcocks

          3. bookwormV +4

            The dictionaries in my English classroom used to have a list of collective nouns for animals! My favourite is “a knob of widgeon”.

    5. dancingcorvid +3

      I knew about the venereal forms – collective nouns for specific animals but I never thought about after they were caught and sliced for dinner… That is Magnificent! Thank you!

  17. knut_knut +11

    this is how I feel every day since I decided to put birdseed out in the mornings
    (it was a bad idea)
    (but now I feel guilty if I don’t)
    (plus they’re kind of cute?)

  18. bethcorriveau +67

    Soon…

    (Fun fact, the first question people ask about this painting “why do they look like they are dead?” and no, it’s not because Joshua Reynolds had a thing for ghosts, it’s because he kept experimenting with his pigments but didn’t manage to get the stability thing right so the reds all faded. Sometimes even during the owner’s lifetime. So you’d get your pretty portrait and a decade or so later you’d get a sneak peek of your corpse.)

  19. 1sic1 +13

    Um, the first little girl is clearly lying. The geese can see what you’re holding, kid, don’t insult their intelligence.

      1. hapsatou +3

        I had to actually check that the first picture wasn’t the picture from the movie because I have that same strong association.

  21. Household_Opera +8

    I’m…worried about girl #1. Geese aren’t quite as vicious as swans, but I wouldn’t want to cross them.

    1. smiavs +8

      Seriously. Those things bite, and she’s clearly outnumbered. It happened to my sister when she was little. Hilariously, her memory of the event has somehow been rewritten so that she swears up and down that she was wearing a duck costume (from a ballet recital) when it happened. As her older sister whose grasp on that time period is more firmly based in reality (and with the support of the adults who were present) I can confidently assert that this was not the case, but cheers to her subconscious for keeping things interesting….

      1. OoTheHumanities +3

        Duck duck goose just became a funnier/nastier game – Now with biting! Tell your kids!

    2. adoptraya +4

      I am also worried, because I hope that the artist did not give a 3-year-old a handful of bread and send her off on her own into a flock of geese.

  22. Sforza +4

    Yay! I’m so stoked to see my absolute favorite artist featured in a Toast art history post, namely Akseli Gallén-Kallela. ^_^ Such beautiful colors and the depictions of rural life in late 19th-early 20th century Finland…

  23. Vertigo +2

    Man, everything I’ve heard about fowl/poultry birds from people who’ve interacted with them has been that they’re terrible. I’ve heard at least two different stories from friends about being terrorized by chickens as a young child, warned that turkeys are large belligerent assholes, and even had a swan bite me when I gave it bread. I didn’t even know swans had teeth, and here one had literally bitten the hand that fed it.

    And even nice pet birds shit all over the place [and I’ve heard some stories about parrots purposely being assholes too]!

  24. lamismamuchachasalvaje +2

    There’s a lake in my hometown semi-famous for its waterfowl, including swans supposedly gifted to the city by the Queen of England. The city symbol is a swan, there are reproductions of swans everywhere. I used to skip out on church when I was in high school and go hang out at the lake.

    One time my friend brought her new boyfriend by for me to judge whether or not he was worthy (he is) and we walked the lake. A goose took umbrage with our presence, walked up, and latched onto his shorts, holding on for at least a minute while he thrashed his leg wildly in an effort to dislodge it.

    Nothing however, was funnier than the time in San Antonio when my little brother (who likes to play tough for his three older sisters and mama) saw an ostrich heading our way and set a new record for how fast he rolled up the truck window. Good thinking on his part, because the ostrich (and a few others) proceeded to peck the car window to get some of that sweet sweet food we bought for the zebras.

  26. vibrissimo

    Summary of emus by an Aboriginal friend: "I hate those fuckin' things. They're always trying to steal your sandwiches or root your leg."

  27. vibrissimo

    I saw a goose bite a woman's arse in London when she wasn't feeding it and the 700000 other beaked scroungers fast enough.

  28. vibrissimo

    Yes, if she's the Clara I think she is, she's Phillip II's daughter and became Regent of the Spanish Netherlands – she's got the right to Attitude.