Landing Kills (Not Flying)

Aquila spread her 2.5 metre long wings and glided in a smooth semi circle across the vast expanse of the sky in one fluid motion. You could hear the silence of an unruffled wind in her symmetry. The rest of the animal kingdom arched their necks up and looked in envy at this artist of air. A few of them sighed, ‘If only …’

Suddenly, Aquila perched on a nearby oak and announced she would be teaching a few select animals to fly, every day. The denizens of the tress and the lands gasped. This was the one dream all these earth bound creatures secretly harboured. To fly, free like a bird.

Immediately, the animals started queueing up. Aquila flew over the line, which was longer than the river flowing through the forest and gave each one of them a date. On The first day, a slithery, red and yellow snake was the chosen one.

The others watched with an unadulterated jealousy as Aquila took the snake up to the nest on her cliff, its tail curling and uncurling beside drifting clouds. Snakey was a bit scared when Aquila’s talons held him but he calmed down after doing the breathing exercises the monkey taught him.

Aquila smiled at Snakey. ‘Are you ready for the ride of your life?’ The snake nodded his neckless head, his eyes shining with the thrill of what was to be. Down below, he could see his friends. He wished he had hands. He could wave out or even blow them a kiss.

In a swift swoop, Aquila flew behind the cliff and dropped him, midair. He began falling at an alarming 1000 metres per second. Before he could even hum the first few bars of ‘I believe I can fly’, his head hit the rock below and splattered. Calmly, the hungry eagle flew down and ate him up.

In this way Aquila began systematically reducing the forest population and filling her tummy without the extra effort of a chase. When animals enquired about why the critters who signed-up for flying class could never be spotted, Aquila sneered ‘You think they will stay here? They have all flown away to a better jungle’.

They nodded, ‘True, who would want to stay here?’ They promised themselves when they learnt to fly they would vamoose too. A few months after the classes began it was the turn of Ratufa, the squirrel.

Aquila rose higher and higher with the doomed squirrel. When she flew behind the cliff, much to her surprise, Ratufa, quickly and viciously bit into her foot, severing it completely.

She lost her balance and began crashing down. Ratufa quickly leaped and clung on to her wings. This immediately lowered his terminal velocity, increased air resistance and the wings began to function like a well-designed parachute.

Eagle and squirrel floated down to those very same rocks where she had thrown innumerable creatures to death. Ratufa looked at his flying instructor, bleeding to death and chuckled.

Before she went forever, she heard Ratufa whistle and saw hundreds of other squirrels from the neighbouring trees, leaping down, chattering savagely, all eager to try eagle meat for the first time.

Moral: if you can think of an evil thought, somebody else can think it too.



Aquila and Ratufa are drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com