{"id":3593,"date":"2020-02-18T20:25:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T19:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/?p=3593"},"modified":"2020-02-18T20:25:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T19:25:13","slug":"the-funeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/?p=3593","title":{"rendered":"The funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Once every so often one can find a dead animal aside of the road or in the grass. They can be hit by traffic or if a bird, fly against a window of a vehicle or a building. At other times they are possibly caught by a cat or simply they were sick or just plain old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today my sweet dog peed on my daughter&#8217;s beautiful carpet that I had bought for her bedroom. No, don&#8217;t worry my dog is fine. But in order to get it cleaned and to make sure there would be no smell or stains left, I went to the store to get baking soda and cleaning vinegar. On my way to the store, I found a dead magpie laying in the middle of a grassy field. I like magpies. I see them a lot in my neighborhood and I usually have a pair visiting me on my balcony sometimes. I looked around to see if I saw its spouse somewhere but No other birds nearby to be heard or spotted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I pondered about the dead magpie wondering what had caused his death as I continued my walk to the store. I felt bad for its partner because I know magpies usually live in pairs. On my way back home after I had all my groceries I was nearing the place where the dead magpie was laying in the grass again. As I came closer though I saw immediately it wasn&#8217;t alone anymore, there were two other smaller magpies gathering around it and when I looked around I saw a third on the roof of a building nearby making loud sounds, seemingly to alert all the other birds of the passing of one of their kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I kinda wished I had my phone with me but I had forgotten it at home because I was a little bit in a rush when I left, so I couldn&#8217;t take a picture or a video of the gathering. I realized I was the witness of a magpie funeral. I had heard of it before and read about it but never experienced it myself. &#8220;Rest well dear magpie,&#8221; I worded voiceless in my mind. &#8221; You will be missed.&#8221; And I was sure of that last looking at how the other magpies gathered around it. I noticed one brought some grass to the bird and another pecked it gently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A biker came near the other direction and startled the birds and they flew up to land in a tree not far. I took the chance to pass the place of mourning myself too so I wouldn&#8217;t startle the birds later on myself to go home. After I had passed  I looked back at the ground again and the other birds already were back at its side. I saw more birds on another roof nearby. I assume they came to attend the funeral just as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am grateful to have witnessed such respect they show their dead family member and for a few brief moments, I mourned with them. I thanked them and then went home with my groceries since that carpet wasn&#8217;t going to clean itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once every so often one can find a dead animal aside of the road or in the grass. They can be hit by traffic or if a bird, fly against a window of a vehicle or a building. At other times they are possibly caught by a cat or simply they were sick or just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3594,"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3593\/revisions\/3594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperedwords.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}