Combing The Desert

Oriole Blackbird (Gymnomystax mexicanus), family Icteridae, order Passeriformes, Venezuela

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

I had this whole idea thought out. I was going to propose on Christmas Eve, which is traditionally the day where we celebrate just the two of us. My dad proposed to my mom on Christmas Eve, and I could be equally annoying and romantic by giving her a dozen little boxes of little trinkets like gaming dice and stickers and things. And then I could make sure that the last box she opened was the box with the ring. It was September and I’d already started working on procuring little boxes and gifts. I’d ordered the ring and it was on its way. The anticipation was exciting.

Except. I worked late one night at the end of September - a night I didn’t normally work late. And I came home to, well, this:

I went inside and said (loudly, perhaps more than once) “what the fuck?!”

My wife had plastered the walls of our little apartment with neon green sticky notes saying all the things she loved about me and all the things she was looking forward to doing in the future with me. The sticky notes all had little arrows so I could follow them. I went around the kitchen, down the hallway, and finally to our (closed) bedroom door. Wife was nowhere to be seen.

“What the fuck!! What the fuck!!” I cry again.

I gingerly turn the handle to the door of our bedroom and fling it open like there might be a bomb on the other side.

Instead, there is my wife, on one knee, ring in hand.

“What the fuck!!” I say again for good measure.

To which she replies, smug as hell, “‘sup.”