Once upon a time, the bird said to his captor, there was nothing else but us birds and bees. We were the essence of all things. We were the Alpha and Omega, the Beta and the Tau, and the whole rest of the Greek alphabet. The birds sang, the bees droned, everybody flew around.

But it has changed a lot since, hasn't it?, said the young girl, who hadn't decided yet about releasing the bird or not.

It couldn't stay like this, said the bird. It was a pleasant time, in a way, but there was nothing to do, nowhere to go. Bees buzzed, looking busy, though they were as bored as the birds.

This is never the case here, said the girl, thoughtfully. Not only we always have something to do but it's not always pleasant.

Put the blame on us, said the bird. One day, the birds and bees met together and decided to put an end to all that laziness. From now we would all work, act, create things, build nests and hives, defile statues or sting people.

But how could you do this? I take it that there were neither statues nor people then.

True indeed. First, we drew a list of all the things we needed, like trees, flowers, pollen, statues, time, people, songs by Dean Martin, Tony Bennett and Isabel Monteiro. Then the birds started collecting feathers and when we got enough of them the bees glued them together with honey, so we had a creator in our own image. When the device was completed, we gave it the to-do list and set it to work. It started with the simplest things like land and water, but, believe it or not, in a week it had the whole place created, bells and whistles included.

It's far from perfect, sighed the young girl, who bothered about world famine and the shape of her nose.

Remember, it's all feathers and honey, said the bird. It's not that bad. Things would have been less comfortable with hedgehogs and dung beetles instead of us birds and bees.

But what about you? You lost something in the process, didn't you ? Birds and bees don't exactly rule the world today.

Ah, well, we didn't have anything to rule over before so we haven't lost anything literally speaking. But it's true that we've become little cogs in the great design, so that hurt our pride at first. The birds were somewhat bitter, they said they shouldn't have trusted anything made with a product regurgitated by a bee's stomach. But time, that we invented, time smoothed over this initial awkwardness. It's all right now, really.

So please, added the bird, can I go now?

Little birdie, said the young girl, I'm not sure that your story