{"id":241,"date":"2020-01-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/?p=241"},"modified":"2020-01-16T21:48:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T05:48:54","slug":"hops-and-giggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/2020\/01\/18\/hops-and-giggles\/","title":{"rendered":"Hops and Giggles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Asif Akbar<\/a> from FreeImages<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen minutes (plus) free write using the following prompt: The birds didn\u2019t go south for the winter.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The birds didn\u2019t go south for the winter. At least not the young\u2019uns. They refused to fly south, carrying the elders\u2019 luggage one more time, so the elders could lounge in southern waters, float on their backs and demand that the young\u2019uns act as lackeys and waiters, hoisting lily pads laden with drinks topped with bamboo umbrellas.\u00a0 The young\u2019uns suspected that the elders were sure as heck not meditating with spritzers as they said. The odor, for one thing.\u00a0 Alcohol reeked through every feather. The giggles, another. The elders never giggled in the north. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the young\u2019uns stayed up north. They found an active hops brewery with an empty warehouse where they were protected from the elements. At night, they free-ranged the hops and barley for food and by day slept in a warm huddle. The warehouse was well insulated with poop, and they had hop stalks on which to lay. The only thing missing was water, difficult to find in the winter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They inspected the tanks and realized that the liquid within was controlled by a quarter-turn spout. Quickly mastered by Wally with his engineer\u2019s mind, they soon began filling themselves with fresh crafted, fine ales and happily waddled back to their warehouse at the end of each night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young\u2019uns grew rather portly, that winter, and they, uh,\nkind of lost track of time. A week after the elders arrived back in the north\nand had seen not one feather of the young\u2019uns, they held a memorial of sorts,\nwith weeping and gnashing of beaks, and created such a ruckus that the young\u2019uns\nawoke and realized holy heck that they had overslept their migration alarm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They evacuated the warehouse and ran for takeoff. Most found\nit hard to get airborne, and Wally, poor Wally who had mastered the quarter\nturn handle and used it frequently, had the toughest time of them all. He\nbarely cleared the barbed wire and got a shave where he never wanted one. \n\nThe young\u2019uns were excited to see the elders. The\nelders, however, were alarmed at the sudden droopy and loopy-winged appearance\nof the young\u2019uns. And their odor. Alcohol reeked through every feather. They\nlooked severely at the young\u2019uns. The young\u2019uns giggled.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifteen minutes (plus) free write using the following prompt: The birds didn\u2019t go south for the winter. The birds didn\u2019t go south for the winter. At least not the young\u2019uns. They refused to fly south, carrying the elders\u2019 luggage one more time, so the elders could lounge in southern waters, float on their backs and demand that the young\u2019uns act … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,31],"tags":[55,53,28,54,52],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-shorts","tag-animals-as-characters","tag-birds","tag-free-write","tag-migrating-birds","tag-migration","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}