Gunji jackdaw
February 8, 2113
Octavio Briswald’s field notes
It was a moment never to be forgotten.
There we stood, man and giant bird, face to ferocious beak. His cold reptilian eyes bored fixedly into mine; I dared not blink. Aside from the ubiquitous scribbling of Fitzmurdle’s sketching pencil, the world around us was muffled and silent, respectful of our intense communion.
And then my darkest fears were realized. In one motion, the mighty bird lowered his powerful head and raised his wings straight up to the sky. Back arched; primary feathers quivered; tail spread to reveal two wicked eyespots. He was the very picture of hostility, and I knew I had mere nanoseconds before he reared up and ripped into me with the claws of his mighty toes.
There was no time for hesitation—only action. On a wave of surging adrenalin I leapt into the air, throwing myself across his back and using the force of my forward momentum to snap his head around on its neck: an instantaneous death.
In the quest for knowledge it is inevitable that some sacrifices must be made; nonetheless, I shall remember my fallen foe with honor and respect until the very day I join him in the afterlife.
Leonard Fitzmurdle’s personal log
Judging by his self-congratulatory monologue on the way back to the ship, it seems that Briswald misinterpreted the jackdaw’s amorous advances as aggression, which explains his startling actions. I didn’t have the heart to correct him.
Still, at least both parties were equally delusional; the look of joyous rapture that crossed the jackdaw’s face as Briswald leapt on her back was positively incandescent. We should all wish for a death such as this: instant, painless, and at a moment of pure ecstasy.
Other mentions: Odo herded of these through the promenade in an alien-experiment-induced waking dream (DS9).
