Resilience

Rob's friend Melanie bartends at wildlife fundraiser.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, I'm Rob. Tale number sixty-one resilience. When my friend Melanie was younger, she was a freelance bartender. She would do things like weddings, family reunions, and in this case, a fundraiser. This fundraiser was for a wildlife rehabilitation group in Atlanta. The host was a wealthy environmentalist, and their house was in this old country club just outside of Atlanta. It was a mansion with a huge back deck where a lot of the event took place. And in the backyard there are these massive old pine trees that went all the way down to the bank of the Chattahoochee River, and you could see the river from the deck. It was a really beautiful location. There were some quirks with this house. Like they let everyone know that the walls were made from recycled newspapers. And in the toilets the water was brown, and a lot of people thought the toilets were broken actually, but it was because they were using recycled rainwater. And so there was this sort of apologetic tone. Yeah, we live in this huge country club, but also our house is made of recycled newspapers. And so Melanie was situated on the back deck. That's where the bar was set up, and also on the back deck was sort of the centerpiece of this entire gathering. It was a birdcage with a little brown bird in it. It was actually a brown thrasher. The bird was very frightened of people. Anytime someone walked near the cage, it would start flying around screeching. And a rep from the wildlife group was standing nearby to tell the story of this bird. It had been injured in a recent outbreak of tornadoes that had hit Atlanta. The group had rehabilitated it, and now it was ready to be released back into the wild. And so the narrative of the event was resilience. This bird was resilient just like the city of Atlanta was resilient, and both were going to recover from these tornadoes. Music is playing, people are dancing, it's a big party. The time comes to release the bird. The music is turned off, and everyone gathers on the back deck. The host gives a short speech, re-emphasizing how the bird represents resilience. The cage door is opened, the bird takes off into the night sky, towards the pine trees and the chattahooochie. It's so quiet it's like everyone is holding their breath. The bird is about twenty feet out of the cage when out of nowhere an owl swoops in and grabs the bird. Everyone at the party gasps at the same time. The owl doesn't fly very far. It heads to one of the nearby pine trees, and everyone gets a perfect view of the owl eating the bird. There are some soft sobs, there's nervous laughter. Nobody gives a speech or says anything. Nobody knows what to do. Someone starts the music back up, people slowly start talking again. Melanie said the people that seemed the least surprised were the rehabbers. I guess that when your job is to try and help injured wildlife, you deal with death on a daily basis. They understood that things like this happen. One interesting thing that Melanie mentioned was that before the bird was released, there weren't very many people drinking. She was not making very many tips at the bar. But after the bird was killed, a huge line formed at the bar, and she was busy for the rest of the night. Everyone there needed a drink. Rob Tells Tales is produced by me, Rob Tiffen. The cover art is by Marcella Johnson. She also came up with the title of the podcast. Our theme music is by Mitchell Hardidge. Thanks to Ben, Gordon, Marcella, and Melanie, who are always there to bounce ideas around. You can find us on Instagram and at robtellstales.com. And thanks to you for listening.