The Cuckoo

     The White Throat Sparrow birds are nice and small beings. And they are good singers so that everybody is delighted to listen to them.

     The White Throat family built their nest in a bush in the forest. Five fine, small eggs are in it. Mom White Throat is looking forward to their young ones. She is very busy with breeding the eggs. Day and night she is sitting on them and warming them with her feathers. From time to time she flies away for a short time to continue the breeding more eagerly.

      Mom White Throat has become tired from sitting too long on the eggs. So, one day, she wants to fly around a bit to have some flying exercise. At that very moment Father White Throat returns. He is excited and angrily looks black.

     “Do NOT leave our nest today! Danger is threatening! A cuckoo is nearby!!” – Mother White Throat is surprised. She has never seen her husband in such a mood. “What’s this cuckoo about? He’s a fine bird and his cuckoo calls are nice . I'm not afraid of him!”´

     Now Father White Throat gets wild. “You are a silly! How often I have told you that the cuckoo is a very dangerous fellow.. He's too lazy to breed his own eggs, and therefore lays them in our nests for us to breed them out. Once the young cuckoo is born, he will throw our young ones out of the nest so that they will fall down and starve in a deplorable manner. I do warn you. I do want you not to leave our nest today. The cuckoo is nearby! Do not forget it! If, however, you leave our nest, I will have finished with you. I will wish to have nothing more to do with you!”

     After saying that he flies away. Mom White Throat is very angry. Right now she would have liked to fly around a bit. For some time she has been pondering about what her husband had told her.

      “Certainly not, nonsense!  Nothing will happen if I flly around a bit. I'll soon be back.”

     Shortly afterwards Mom White Throat leaves the nest.   She night have been away for half an hour or so. When she is back, she has a bad conscience. Full of fear she searches the nest. She gets frightened. What's that? One egg is missing, but a foreign one is in the nest. It has got a strange colour and is a bit bigger. At this moment Father White Throat comes back. Quickly Mum White Throat sits upon the eggs. Her heart is beating very much, but she did not betray her feelings. She does not stop sitting on the eggs and breeding them.

     Some time later the young ones, four small, wonderful white throats, leave the shells. But amid them is a foreigner. He has got quite different feathers, and is much bigger than the other ones. Mum White Throat does know what has happened. She has bred a cuckoo's egg. The very egg the cuckoo has put in her nest the day when she had flown away for a short time!

     When Father White Throat saw the foreigner in the nest, he was very upset. He blamed his wife very much. Mom White Throat wept very heavily. Her husband has  mercy upon her.“  I do forgive you”, he says, and flies away to look for food for the crying young birds.

      Father and Mother White Throat cannot get enough worms and flies; for the young cuckoo is insatiable. Though he snatches all the food from the young white throats, he pretends to suffer from hunger. He's a terrible glutton. He gets bigger and bigger from day to day, whilst the young white throats get thinner and thinner and weak and weaker. One day the misfortune happens!  When Father and Mother White Throat come home again, two of their “kids” are lying dead in the nest, whereas the two remaining ones were thrown out of the nest by the foreigner. With every bone smashed they lie on the ground. The fat cuckoo, however, opens his beak to cry for more food.

     Father and Mother White Throat wept very much. But they continue to feed the cuckoo. They have NOT learned any lesson out of their bitter experience. They look after the foreign guest as they would not have better with their own “kids”. Some time later, the cuckoo leaves the nest; and does not care any longer about his foster-parents. Father and Mother White Throat are left alone. They have lost their young ones, they have lost everything. One day they lie on the ground, dead. They died of  sorrow.

The moral of the matter: Get rid of unwanted foreigners as long as you are capable to!