STORKS

“This stork comes into a bar and asks for a beer.” And so on and so on. Jokes like that are funny because of the incongruity of the situation. A stork does not, under usual circumstances, walk into a bar and ask for a drink.

Similarly, I did not expect to see storks walking calmly around a newly mown hay field, looking for little critters whose cover has just been blown. So seeing these two long-legged fellows for the first time made for a potential car wreck.

The truth is that storks are common fowl in southern Estonia, and it is not at all unusual to see their nests on utility poles. One wonders if they have a connection to the hot wire to plug their refrigerators into. Maybe they don’t have a need to walk into a bar to get a beer.

--Aarne