LETTERS: NO NEED TO KEEP A LEDGER OF LIFE

To the editor:

Lately, I have become overly interested in birds. I am not the first to suffer with this madness. And, truthfully, one could have worse afflictions. If birds do some things better than we, it is perhaps that no one has ever bothered them with all of the inanities which are constantly coming to us. We have been delighted this year to watch a pair of robins build a nest in the brace of the porch roof. They did their work well. They never asked us where we were going nor seemed to be overjoyed when we returned. I tried to treat them with similar respect, never saying to them, "Robin, you must live one day at a time."

My new birthday book, the third edition of "National Geographic Birds of America," tells us that there are over 600 species. I noted when first moving from Morgan County to these parts that the robin nests of the local population are not as well-made as those in my home county and that the interior cup of mud is not as smoothly done. I was not troubled and perhaps remembered that our houses are not so well-made here as farther north.

My bird book tells us that there are over 600 species that live and breed in America. It keeps changing, and many of the feather-fossil signatures are of birds we never see in our trees of today. Edward Wilson, in "The Diversity of Life," an incredibly interesting book, asks us what we have to do with a bright purple butterfly fluttering its wings on a forsaken log in forsaken Ecuador.

The Post claims there are not 6 billion people in the world, a claim easy to believe for anyone who had just returned from I-270 in St. Louis. In the fifth grade, we read that nothing could compare with the emptiness of the deep ocean floor, but Wilson asks me to believe that the deep ocean floor is incredibly busy.

Home again, I read that the insurance has been canceled on our house and that a check written for $2,000 has been processed for $7,000. Perhaps prompted by the condition of my desk, I bought a book on chaos theory and conclude that one can no longer write a letter on a single topic.

On my early morning trip to the john, I note that the lid from the water box is on the floor and wonder why my wife has suddenly become curious about plumbing.

Young Kennedy has crashed into the sea, violating all the rules we were taught as student pilots.

So has the world suddenly gone mad?

Not at all. The insurance company and the bank made mistakes. They corrected them, and I had the pleasure of giving each of them a tongue lashing. J.J., at Meyer Supply Co., gave me an improved part for the flapper and charged me nothing. My house did not burn in the dangerous interim. The robins did OK and got their fledglings out of the nest and quickly lost interest in them, there being no PTA for robins.

Poets and philosophers write endlessly about cosmic meanings and wonder if life means ill or good. I have never attempted a ledger, fearing that I might end with an overdraft.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau