"Good Morning everyone. Isn't it a beautiful day to get your head out of the sand & smell something other than elephant dung! Yes siree bob, this day is going to be a good hunting day." Oliver was always the happy one in the group. He rightfully should be since he was consistently a half hour late to work each day. He also spent most of his day eating while on the job.
Oliver was helping clean up the savanna along the Tadpole ridge in Eastern Africa. Well...Oliver over saw the project. See he was not only the Alpha male to the herd but also a King in his own mind. He used his position for all it was worth. 
Oliver would stroll in late...over see the other thirty seven ostriches, aka os-trages in New Zealand, (see the above title for the blog) then head to a sandy bank. In an hour or so he would get up to eat grasses and maybe a lizard, check on his herd and end up on the sandy bank again. This routine went on all day until Oliver would leave around 3:47 pm. He hated to rush so he left early to beat the running, squawking, wing-flapping, shift change on the grassland. The term 'bank &/or banker's hours' was coined after Oliver's work ethics and environment.
On a normal 'Oliver' day he would look around and admire his realm as he ate cheese whiz covered ants, cheese whiz covered lizards, cheese whiz covered grasses, really anything he could get down his throat had cheese whiz on it. Oliver was the only known ostrich that had a love affair with cheese whiz. The entire herd would tease him. He looked more like Big Bird with the color of his legs and neck after trying to spray cheese whiz with his two toes while holding the food in his beck. Oliver was pathetic.
Oliver was proud of the 1000 acres of pristine savanna in which he was responsible. His workers were happy and clucked all the while they worked. Why wouldn't they be content. Oliver allowed them to eat on the job and anything they couldn't swallow they could take home.
On this one special Wednesday morning, orders came down from the head office. There had been a secret contest held in which the winning savanna would be selected to sponsor a rock concert. Yep you guessed it...Oliver hadn't arrived at work yet when the exciting news arrived. The crew was all a flutter since they would be receiving 'free' tickets to the concert.
Oliver strolled in with his head in the clouds. No really, he literally did. There was a low lying fog along the coast line that had moved inland and with his long neck he was....see what I mean. When he sat down on the sandy bank he finally noticed seventy four feet wiggling under seventy four red legs. When Oliver realized what he was looking at he told his herd to control their toes and sit down.
Oh my was Oliver excited when the others finally included him in the earth shattering news. "He was going to be a star. His own concert right here in his own grasslands. All those famous people right here...right beside him or behind him. Yes they would have to be behind him. Oh, oh, he would have to have his feathers preened and the head hair gelled" he smiled to himself. There was so much to do and so little time. The concert was in two weeks.
Finally when Oliver came out of his fog he hadn't even asked who was preforming at the concert. When he found out he thought he was going to have a stoke. (It's very dangerous for an ostrich to have a stroke. Their little heads haven't room for a clot to form so it ends up pushing out their already really big eyes. They walk around looking like a fly on steroids that's rubber necking.) Anyway...it was the one and only "Rhea". She was the hottest thing next to desert sand. That girl had legs that went all the way up to her bottom feathers. WOW what a hot chick.
Every bird including Oliver worked very hard the next fourteen days. The sand, grasses,trees were gorgeous. There wasn't a shrub out of place and the grasses swayed in harmony to the breeze. The level of excitement was so loud it felt like a thunderstorm.
You're not going to believe this but Oliver was working his tail feathers off for this event. The only thought in his mind was "Rhea". He wanted everything just right for her. It is a known fact that an ostrich's brain is smaller than one of their eyes. So Oliver could only concentrate on one thought at a time. His true love of cheese whiz became a cheese was. Since he had forgotten about food covered in whiz his feathers were becoming clean and were a beautiful black. His long legs and neck became their brilliant pinkish red. He was a very handsome Struthio Camelus. Oliver honored his species name.
The concert was a hit and Rhea put on a great performance. She was taken back by her host. He was a tall, nine foot, handsome male with jet, black feathers and white plumage. He definitely was a man in charge and knew how to use his power. When Oliver offered her his realm at Tadpole Ridge for her to use as her vacation retreat, how could she refuse. She had heard about a male that loved cheese puffs and had let Whiskers eat them before he stuck her in a box and... anyway she knew it had to have been someone else. This man was a kind as he was handsome.
Oliver was now the true Alpha male of his kingdom and not the one that just got by on simple carbs. Behind every great male there's a female that makes them feel good about themselves. Since males can only think of one thing at a time it might as well be on important things and not the cheesy stuff!
Cheese, Not Again! By Curlyfro
Samson's mother Millie was what some would call "overprotective" He was almost seven years old before she would allow him to scurry out of her tail feathers to eat his own food. She would have kept him there longer, but he was taller than her and it was getting a little uncomfortable for her with the arthritis and all. Poor fella never realised he was a little "odd" even though the other ostriches his age (all married with several offspring) never missed the opportunity to ask him if "mommy was still chewing his food" and made various comments about being in captivity. He was so caught up in how amazing he was (his mother told him all the time) that he didn't notice how others lived. His day consisted of following his mother around since she was the only company that could listen to his constant ramblings, even the baby ostriches thought he was an odd duck, but Samson was very content.
As the years went by Samson was able to grow a little bit and stretch his wings. His mother's arthritis was so bad she actually let him wander around, though he was never out of her site. Soon Samson had an ant farm (It took a lot of nagging to convince his mother that they wouldn't hurt him and that he would feed on them everyday) and a passion for jeeps. He could tell you every make and model of every jeep that ever ventured south of the Sahara. And well, if he didn't know, he had no qualms with making something up. At this stage in his life he would lay covered in the tall grass and when an unsuspecting ostrich walked by Samson would jump up and start spewing off all his knowledge about jeeps and ant farms. Since he didn't have many stories he would have to repeat himself or make some up until the victim was able to get away.
Early one morning while Samson was nestling into the grass to start another adventurous day, he heard a vehicle in the distance. Excited he ran towards the sound at his clumsy gait since he was overweight from being coddled. The Jeep stopped and the three people on board started taking his picture. He had heard about becoming famous from UTube and hammed it up for the camera. Unfortunately since he spent so much time with his mother, they were all rather unmanly poses. Assuming they had found a pregnant female, the passengers started tossing crackers at him. Soon Samson was catching them in his mouth while twirling around on one leg and doing plies. Having run out of crackers Samson felt brave enough to walk right up to the jeep and poke around in the bags for a recipe so he could make them at home, for he was kind hearted. Knowing his mother would raise holy hell, he justified his actions with being like Rambo. He was living a dangerous life and it scared him a little, but he was sacrificing for the good of the herd. One of the women in the jeep grabbed a container of cheese whiz and stuck it in his mouth. Gosh A Mighty! That stuff was good! He sucked down the entire container and burped his gratitude before turning away and lumbering off. The rest of the day was spent enlightening everyone about the World War II SAS jeep that had Cheese Whiz. In a spray bottle! As a boy once cried wolf, no one believed poor Samson until the next day.
It started off like any other day in extreme heat, in a desert, with an ostrich talking non-stop. Samson woke up, exhausted his stories on his mother and then... went pale. He moaned... and groaned... and broke out in a sweat. His mother didn't know what was wrong with him and forced noodle soup down his gullet. Hours went by with Samson wriggling in pain until early evening. There was a "pop" and a tennis ball appeared on the grass behind Samson. Samson was the only one who had actually seen a picture of a tennis ball for he spent a lot of time on the Internet (they were on sale at Target this week), but he was sure that was what it was. Oddly enough he felt better and had the energy to embellish on his cheese whiz story before bedtime. The jeep returned to the reserve and fed Samson cheese whiz every couple of weeks and like having a secret lover Samson would race away to met it every time he heard it come. It's not like Samson actually had a secret, the savanna was spotted with tennis balls, but he thought he was being super sly. He created such amusement with the jeep crew that he became a sensation world wide. Samson Appeared on Africa's Got Talent and although he didn't win, signed a contract with Wilson. He and his mother would get to live in a 5x5 cage in California for the rest of their lives after travelling in cargo class for 19 hours!!! Samson was living the dream thinking of all the Grocery Advertisements delivered right to his door and the letters he could send back home of his adventures!
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