Short lives, long summers

Birds were what became of the dinosaurs. Those mountains of flesh whose petrified bones were on display at the Museum of Naturla History had done some brillian retooling over the ages and could now be found in the form of orioles in the sycamores across the street. As solutions to the problems of earthly existence, the dinosaurs had been pretty great, but blue headed vieos and yellow warblers and white throated sparrows -- feather light, hollow boned, full of song -- were even greater. Birds were like dinosaurs better selves. They had short lives and long summers. We all should be so luck as to leave behind such heirs

-- from My Bird Problem by Jonathan Franzen