- Narrator: I got news for you. We birds were used by your early explorers as navigators because we usually flew into the direction of land. You remember what Columbus said, don't you?
- Christopher Columbus: [Italian accent] Follow-a that-a bird.
- Narrator: And Leif Erikson?
- Leif Erikson: [Scandinavian accent] Follow the bird.
- Narrator: Both these boys claimed to be the first to set foot in the New World.
- Christopher Columbus, Leif Erikson: *overlapping arguing*
- Narrator: But we birds know who was here first.
- [spear hits Julius Caesar's 2-Headed eagle in the chest area of the shield]
- Two-Headed Eagle A: Et tu, Brutus...
- Two-Headed Eagle B as Brutus: Likewise...
- [soldiers from different armies, colored Red vs Blue, marching towards each other]
- Narrator: When early armies met for battle, they depended on us birds to decide whether they would fight or not. They use the "sacred chicken" and some "sacred chicken feed".
- [tongue twister]
- Narrator: The sacred chicken was offered the sacred chicken feed. If the sacred chicken eat the sacred chicken feed, that meant there would be a fight. If the sacred chicken refused, there was no fight.
- [chicken sees the feed, but refuses; the armies back away from each other]
- Narrator: Which is how we started the expression, 'to chicken out.' Educational, is it not?
- Narrator: To show you how preoccupied you have been with us birds, you made us an indispensable part of your everyday language. To elucidate:
- Narrator: Getting the bird...
- [a man gets a flying badminton bird lodged in his mouth]
- Narrator: Yardbird...
- [a bird with a yardstick for a body]
- Narrator: Birdbrain...
- [a man with birds in his head]
- Narrator: Lame duck...
- [a roast duck with a bandaged leg]
- Narrator: Bird-dog...
- [a dog flapping in the sky with his long ears]
- Narrator: Gooseneck...
- [two geese kissing each other]
- Narrator: Dovetail.
- [two doves fitted their tail feathers in a dovetail formation]
- Narrator: Now just to put set the record straight... heh-heh... Listen to this:
- [music starts]
- Narrator: When we go splittin' out across the sky / somehow, we seem to make the buckshot fly / Folks keep objecting to our passing-by / Man, it's tough to be a bird /
- Narrator: When we are in a tree and singing loud / 'cause we are happy and we look so proud / We take a beating from the slingshot crowd / Man, it's tough to be a bird /
- Narrator: With BB's they bang us, they even boomerang us / from eagles to sparrows, they shaft us with the arrows, / they snare us, they trap us, and in a cage they clamp us / And what they think we need / is last week's paper to read /
- Narrator: They chase us off the statues we like best / they take our eggs and sometimes 'eat' our nests / they pull our feathers out and call us 'dressed' /
- Narrator: Man, it is tough...
- [POW!]
- Narrator: ...to be...
- [POW!]
- Narrator: ...a...
- [POW!]
- Narrator: ...bird!
- [end music; rapid gunfire and explosion]
- Narrator: Your literary tastes left a lot to be desired too, that is until we, birds, provided the necessary inspiration. For instance, it was a well-known fact that Edgar Allan Poe was having his... hic!... troubles, until a certain raven came along to make him a genius.
- Raven: [whispering] Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary... EEK!
- Edgar Allan Poe: [grabs raven and uses him for a pen] Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.
- Narrator: Oh, think about this. If it were not for us birds, all you people out there would not be here today.
- [picture shows scenery of the Great Flood and Noah's Ark during a rainstorm]
- Narrator: You see, there was this fella, Noah, he sent this dove to look for land. When the dove returned, with an olive branch...
- [dove carries an olive tree and drops it on the ark's roof]
- Narrator: ... no one knew that okay for him and all the animals to come out, two by two.
- Narrator: Lions, elephants, mice, zebras, giraffes, mustangs, geese...
- Narrator: [plucks small itching bugs off from his head] ... and lice.