Birdie the Activist

Birdie on safari at the zoo

You may not realize it, but my Birdie intends to save the world-- literally.  She has plans to save homeless puppies, endangered species, kids with cancer, underfunded local hospitals, disappearing forest land, and public education.  Oh, and she wants to abolish Daylight Savings Time.  These are causes that have been brought to her attention this year and she intends to rectify them all.


At the beginning of the school year, Birdie's NatGeo Kids magazine got her all riled up about saving endangered species (again) and homeless pets.  She would rant on and on about rainforest depletion and about how under-appreciated the Earth's animal population apparently is.  This was often jumbled in with comments about irresponsible pet owners and crowded animal shelters  She would rave on and on seemingly forever, until I felt the need to strangle something, namely one the 2.3 million kitties in the animal shelter that she mentioned 2.3 million times I could help save.  Don't get me wrong-- I feel bad for the kitty... I just want you to feel my pain for a moment.  I didn't have anyone offering to strangle me as an option to escape Birdie's wrath.

A couple of months after school started, Birdie started noticing all the deer roadkill around where we live.  She also noticed all the construction in the neighborhoods surrounding our home.  She put two and two together and realized our woodlands were being depleted, thus the roadkill.  She wrote a letter to the President in regards to this (below) shortly after Winter Break.  Do the math-- she stewed on this topic, out loud, for three long, grueling months.

Birdie's letter to the President about urban expansion

Writing the letter seemed to get this topic out of Birdie's system and she moved on to bigger issues.

The cover (minus spellcheck)

The donation promise

The next major cause Birdie adopted was raising money for Children's Hospital to help cure kids with cancer.  Her plan was to create, publish and sell a coloring book that raised awareness about cancer and money for the cause at the same time.  She created several pages of this coloring book before she petered out on this cause, but she still revives this one from time to time.  She may eventually finish this one some day.  (I realize she's wanting to give the money to Children's Hospital and the donation promise says the proceeds will be for breast cancer research, but when she started this whole thing she thought breasts were the only things that got cancer!)

Cancer started losing its shine after Birdie read part of an article in the newspaper about underfunded local schools.  She let this bother her for about a day, but when no immediate course of action presented itself, she let it go-- for now.  She's waiting for an epiphany, I imagine.

Daylight Savings Time caused another minor blip on Birdie's radar.  She made a picket sign (on printer paper) that said "DST is a waste of my time!"  She asked if we could "go hang out" in front of the Capitol Building for the weekend to "start a protest".  When I told her we'd have to fill out some papers to get a permit to do that, she decided she'd rather watch cartoons and go geocaching instead.  Apparently, DST isn't that bad after all.

We are now back to raising money for Children's Hospital, but this time the money has no designation for how it's to be spent.  Birdie is just worried that the hospital might be underfunded, so she has devised Costumes for Kids.  Costumes for Kids is and organization that provides children with an opportunity to buy, sell

Costumes for Kids invitation

or trade old Halloween costumes with other children.  Her plan is to invite a bunch of kids together to one place to have this swap meet, and half the cash anyone makes will be donated to the hospital as a fee for participating in the event.  Pretty sweet plan for a 7 year-old.  As you can see, she has been hand-writing the invitations.  I wonder if she'll finish?

I am always amazed and tickled to hear Birdie's latest scheme.  I am also impressed that, so far, none of these schemes have been get-rich-quick deals.  Up to this point, all her endeavors -- or near endeavors-- have been in the spirit of charity or social betterment (except maybe DST?).  Is this because she is an angel, or is she just too innocent to see that she could be profitting from some of these ideas?  I'd like to think she's and angel, but only time will really tell... if she ever follows through to the end on one of these plans. :)