Considering their early roots as dinosaurs, birds have really been on a downward spiral for the past 50 million years. We talk of birds in the same way we talk of the feats of our children. For example, 2-year-old says a full sentence everyone says, “aww, isn’t he so smart!” but if I say a complete sentence people are like, “What the, who the hell are you and how did you get into our house. Honey, call the cops!” Bird wakes up early without an alarm and catches a worm, everyone goes crazy, what an achievement let’s give it its own saying! Dinosaur catches a worm, nobody cares and they tell it to go film another Jurassic Park movie.
When William Camden coined the term, early bird catches the worm I don’t think he had many interactions with birds. In fact I doubt he ever even met a bird at all. If a falcon caught a worm that’s the worst falcon ever. If a pigeon caught a worm it would probably kill it considering its diet is city hot dogs from street vendors.
If we’re talking about the worms on Arakkis in the book Dune then now we’re talking. It would be a feat to catch an Arakkis Worm whether it was early in the day or not. Those worms can be almost 3,000 meters long. To put that into perspective, if you had a standard 100-yard restraining order with a person and they had a 100-yard restraining order on another person and on and on. You could have 32 people on the back of the worm with no one breaking their restraining order.
That all being said, it doesn’t matter how big the worm is I never would appreciate a worm as an award. In fact, most worms don’t want a worm as an award as they prefer other things like berries, the delectable beetle, nectar, fish and the list goes on. All more appealing than a worm.
The most notable human example of an undesirable reward, our worm if you will, is the company pizza party. Work your ass off. Put in overtime, wake up early. Deal with difficult contractors and unreasonable clients. Accomplish tasks not part of your job description. Cover for poor staffing and/ or poor management. All to help the company achieve success. What is your reward for maintaining profits? Well of course you would think it would be a financial boost, a one-time bonus to show appreciation or maybe even that promotion. Wrong! When you walk into the breakroom there, on the table is an Italian circle, a pizza and probably not enough to feed everyone in the department.
Company appreciation pizza, the bird and the worm of the working world.
The first time we as humans were really forced to wake up early was for school. The worm in school was the gold sticker. Do you want to get extra recess for doing so well on the math minute? No way! Back to cursive young one, it’ll come in really handy when you sign your life away later with unsurmountable debt. Here’s a gold sticker though to unbalance your paper, the top corner is gonna dip now every time you pick it up.
Next time somebody tells you the early bird gets the worm, tell them that’s nice but I’m going to sleep for a couple more hours and then have a bagel. With no worms in it. No insects at all. Get out of here you entomophile, I don’t even know how you got into my room again.
You early birds can have your worms, I’ll be the second mouse that gets the cheese.