Ostriches and Tiny Heads

Ostriches don’t actually bury their heads in the sand. But after reading this story, you might want to. It all started out as a plight of a few hundred feathered friends suffering from bird flu in Canada. Then things got weird. Actually, considering the times in which we find ourselves, I suppose you could argue that’s when things got normal. For example, there’s this excerpt from the story: “The farm began to fortify. Trip lines were laid around the ostrich pens and hooked up to bear bangers to scare away intruders. Supporters equipped themselves with walkie-talkies. And Dave and Karen started sleeping in the ostrich pens.” And trust me, that’s just a warm-up. I know what you’re thinking. Dave, I really don’t care how weird this story gets, I’m just glad you’re not leading with any insane political news that pummels our frontal lobes like Mike Tyson works a speed bag. Well, don’t take off that cranial helmet just yet. This is 2025, and the same cast of characters that poisons our headlines infects everything, spreading their ill-informed influence faster than the virus at the heart of this story. Thus, there’s no point in saying spoiler alert when the same thing spoils every story. Which is how we get to this outtake: “The activists had been camping out for months; their numbers sometimes reached into the hundreds. They knew the government was saying that the ostriches had bird flu, but they were convinced that this was cover for some other, bigger scheme. The feds were conspiring with the United Nations and Big Pharma, they said. Small farmers’ rights were being trampled. But Dave and Karen’s birds had other, more powerful friends. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was making calls to Canadian officials; Dr. Oz had offered to evacuate the ostriches to his ranch in Florida.” Even when you’re just trying to read a story about ostriches, you can’t go cold turkey on these guys. Daniel Engber in The Atlantic (Gift Article): All the Ostriches Must Die.