I have been fascinated by birds my entire adult life. Ever since I realized no one’s special and life isn't a movie in which I’m playing the lead role, birds have seemed more interesting and even wiser to me. On the other hand, since becoming part of the bocce community, a lot of my social life has changed for the better, and so I decided to compile a list of reasons why bocce is better than birds but try to keep room open for the respect birds deserve:
- Great horned owls are really amazing to see in the wild - but can they sneak a halo for a 3-to-1 point swing?
- If you mess up in bocce, your team is there to save you. If you mess up with birds, those birds will never forget that.
- Bocce can be played anywhere. Birds can only go up and down, north and south.*
*sources pending - Anyone can be good at bocce making it very accessible and fun. There are only like nine good birds. Six, if magical birds are considered “made up” or some other technicality.
- There is nothing like outdoor bocce on a beautiful spring day. One of the oft overlooked benefits of outdoor bocce is there aren't hummingbirds around to make you think they're really big bees or that you’ve suddenly become a giant, causing you to have a melt down over how you’re going to tell your roommates you can’t come home ever again.
- Bocce's a team sport and who doesn't like doing things in teams? I guess birds have flocks...that's pretty cool now that i think about it.
- Team names! You can make up your own ridiculous team names!...”Flamingo” is a rad name though, and there is the “doctor bird” too - I would love to be called "doctor" anything and stop regretting my choices in life.
- You can throw bocce balls, you can't throw a bird - it'll just fly off. But I suppose you can throw its eggs or like a penguin. You shouldn’t do that. Please don’t throw fertilized eggs or any flightless birds.
- Bocce takes place on the ground - can you imagine if we had to play it in trees or like on a rocky cliff somewhere? But I can see how this is an ideal place to keep your young out of a predator's reach.
- Bocce is a social sport where you can make friends! Then again, I mean, If you make friends with a bird, you don't need human friends or even a reason to speak in anything that’s not in song form.
- Orioles are dumb. I once watched my entire family be attacked by the same oriole. Bocce has never attacked my family. Ok, but now that I put words to it that oriole was just protecting its family and it’s now clear that I was the one in the wrong by doing nothing.
- There's nothing like the fine ballet of a close frame: trading one ball for another as one team tries to gain the upper hand, only to be humbled by the other team’s next throw. I suppose birds dance. They dance pretty well, too. Have you ever seen a vogelkop bird-of-paradise dance? Do you even know what that is? Go look it up - it will change how you feel about things like a child’s laughter or really good clouds.
Ok so this went differently than I imagined. In conclusion, it's a hard tie until we learn to ride ostriches during gameplay like some way superior version of polo; in which case, birds will push ahead of bocce by a half point.
