Woodpeckers

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Solomonic Wisdom
The Surgeonistic Woodpecker
Tip-toe through Figurative Telling
Opposed to neat studies: Prejudice
A Children's Story about Jesus Woodpecker

King Solomon tells us to go to the ant to get wise. But also study those what feed on them and thrive on them! And take into account the interdependence of lives in holons or niches of nature as well. Woodpeckers are not less than ants. Much depends on the discerning eye of the mind.
Can you believe that oracular events are "drummed up" to help you? That is another teaching of the Bible. It is also written that the disciples of Jesus used divination.

Solomonic Wisdom

"You are gods," said Jesus. And woodpeckers can fly where "Seeing is believing" (A proverb).

Many sorts of woodpeckers eat ants.

Higher than the ants are the woodpeckers. At least four sorts of woodpeckers eat ants. "Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!" [Proverbs 6:6]
Rise above the misled ones who take only to the ways of crawling ants. Man is no overgrown rat either. The lower the animal we draw information from, the baser or less elevated our comparison may get. There is a danger there.

God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air ... over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
So God created man in his own image ... male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:26-7]

In the very next chapter of Genesis we are told that woman was created out of man's rib [Genesis 2:21-23]. Count if there is a rib missing (there is not). The standby tip is to study the evidence before forming a strong opinion in a matter, or you may cater to a prejudice or more. [LINK]
Study to derive real benefit. There are many beautiful lessons to draw on from the woodpecker.

The Surgeonistic Woodpecker

The woodpecker in the following series of joking abstracts could be the surgeon at the nearest state hospital. Why not try and visualise a jolly surgeon and his predominant strivings through each little essay here? For proper visualisation training is good for man. It helps memory too, says Tony Buzan and illustrates it well. [Mum; Tor; Uy]

1. Before they go to work, which they do well, they may not look like anything special

WOODPECKERS have four strong toes. They can move up trunks of trees in spirals till they reach large limbs where they explore the undersides of branches and in the end they build the nest. They do it by hacking, but thick skulls protect protect them along with a super shock-absorber for their brains.
To discourage insensible drumming, don't try to change the woodpecker, instead try to modify the surface of the favourite site (address). There are usually very good reasons for a woodpecker's behaviour. These reasons had better be carefully gauged and assessed before doing anything bad against the bird.
As lover of other game or fowl, be forewarned: In the spring or summer, assume the round hole you find on your way, could be an active woodpecker nest with eggs or hatchlings inside it. You might still look for such round, deep openings, where both male and female woodpeckers take turns incubating two to eight eggs, and then at once cement the openings. That could turn nice folks against you, for there is a plastic charm over some of the "woodpecker surgeons" - you know.
Did you know that many of them prefer to drill in dying trees or snags? Then "the surgeons" may cause damage to the outside of buildings (facades of oneself) for much the same reasons - and all along they are likely to be drilling for food. When the surgeons at the community hospital peck the walls for food, they are probably underpaid and worse. Also note their oddidies as a good sign that it could pay to improve the buildings and facilities a whole lot.
As it is, woodpeckers may drill cavities for nesting, roosting, or caching food. So do surgeons, if you take a wide, all right look at hospital activities. [2.1]

2. They bore to get under the surface for some deep reason, and you may feel quite helpless about it

THE FIRST STEP to avert a plumage-showy surgeon attack against your wall, can be to control fiendish insects or rotting (hidden decay at first) that cause damage under some surfaces. And that is fairly often what is called for. Don't attack the surgeon when his activity is nature's warning that you need to be careful and sift things well and first-class for yourself - or at your own responsibility - after looking under some surface of study.
Then it could be needed and useful to make necessary repairs which might entail replacing affected timbers, siding, or roofing. These things may all be understood in the nicest way possible, like other nature warnings that we humans love to group as omen-bringers.
Woodpeckers and surgeons are deft. Woodpeckers also use their beaks to drum or tap out messages during breeding season. Yet, if woodpecker activity is not restricted to one site on a building, the birds are likely to be drilling for food.
Woodpeckers can be very charming, sort of, even if they live in hiding. In some community hospitals the surgeons get overloaded and hard to find - But while they go for food and shelter and mating, resident woodpeckers drum strongly, hard and often, and may not be counted to be so polite that it matters.
The fact is they sift things out much and often, and go about utterly discreet till they start chiseling, pecking and boring in their way of ways. It is one that give sure concussions, aches and bruises to others others. But these surgeons are not enemies - just helping out. In feeding, most woodpeckers start at the base of a tree, searching for insects and spiders. We have observed no surgeons at community hospitals do that, so the comparison has to stop there.¤
The sound of insensitive drumming against a wall may be annoying to occupants inside. And the rattling in the trees nearby can often annoy feeble individuals in a hospital bed nearby. All the same, there is a deep reason for their stay, and care should be taken not to scare birds away from an active nest. [3.2]

3. The smug ones have sharp claws and sticky tongues

THERE IS NOTHING more balanced than a woodpecker or surgeon when he or she goes about and digs out vast cavities for the family and gets attracted to bug-infested material where this great bird can drill small holes into the surface to extract what nature may dispense with. Unless you are really balanced and strongly armed against brain concussion and all that goes with the pecking activity, maybe you should not strive to become a surgeon at a stress-ridden community hospital either. Woodpeckers too have the ability to drum on the surface, bore tiny holes to inspect and later expand them for greater profit.
Furthermore, woodpeckers are equipped with sharp claws that enable them to cling upright on the bark of trunks and branches. We have seen no surgeons excelling in that. At times they probe small holes in wood to catch insects. That is indeed a warning of a kind.
To get well-adapted to living in trees can become a problem when the site is a metal or brick wall, or wooden siding of a house, and when the woodpecker pecks on it in the early morning. Bad and uncivic neighbours can make a lot of difference to these jolly creatures.
When they bore and gain the ardently desired nest, nature's surgeons tunnel down six to eighteen inches deep, making the excavation wider at the bottom for the egg chamber. A minority among our garden surgeons excavate holes in live trees, not rotten and smug ones, and are aided by long, flexible, bristled and sticky tongues in their great and hoary art-work. [3.1]

We hope you have visualised well.

Woody Woodpecker's delight on top of the Tao-te Ching

The red-shafted kind of woodpecker may have lived on top of Lao-tzu's Taoist doctrine that "We pierce and cut out doors and windows to make a house. [Ch 11] What about Jesus? He thought that Heaven was "like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky. [Gospel of Thomas, logion 20]"
But he was wrong there too: There is wrong seed information is in other gospels too. In one of them it is said the mustard seed becomes a large tree - alas. For the mustard seed is not the smallest seed there is; far from it. And it does not become a large plant either, just a bit more than a meter high. Birds cannot perch on it. So much for "bible biology".

Tip-toe through Figurative Telling

In the prophet Isaiah we feel a woodpecker at work.

COMMON language contains idioms (fixed phrases); rich and vivid images; similes; metaphors; and maybe even higher figurative expressions like those of allegory and insignia (emblems and great signs). We have been rather close to allegory teachings already.
That art of building meanings through comparisons that tend to halt, show how human nature likes to compare and understand by artful juxtapostions. Yes, by some figurative extension we can produce mighty new sayings, and gist may be formed so as to look like handed-over proverbs. Gist is good for memory. That is a handy principle to be used a lot during one's education. It saves a lot of memory traces from rotting, so to speak, so go for it.

The jolly woodpecker isn't a boring pain

Bear in mind that woodpeckers bring warnings of a kind.

Let every little woodpecker - and surgeon, of course - carry his own song around. Here is a freedom field.

The jolly woodpecker and the ardent surgeon want to hurt no man.

The completely mad surgeon is not to be tied up by minors, nor is a woodpecker.

If the surgeon's pecking is just a boring pain, there is not enough good gain.

The jolly woodpecker needs neither paint nor fashion clothes - it is the same with a really good-looking woman in a surgeon's job. ¤

Many can pretend they're woodpeckers, but make-up betrays them

Many can pretend they are woodpeckers, but not if they are put to the pecking test – Some just pretend they are well educated surgeons, but their lack of papers betray them, if not their lack of skills in pecking and drilling talk against them.

You can never tell a woodpecker's boring capacity by the make-up and beak of another bird.¤

What the woodpecker is truly after, is known to himself (it is to live well, is the bet). What the surgeon is after, is likewise known to himself.

There cannot be very many that thrive by pecking in a neighbourhood

Peck your own nest (i.e. home) - the woodpecker lives it at its best.

Peck and get your own dear nest; the surgeon tries to live it at its best.

There cannot be many painful gains if the woodpecker is to live well.

If you cannot thrive by pecking a lot, you should not do it.

Summary

Neither the surgeon nor the jolly woodpecker is a boring pain . . .
Make-up will not work very well for the woodpecker and desperate surgeon.
There cannot be very many that thrive by pecking in a neighbourhood - surgeons should be few and far between where the public health is excellent, then.

If the surgeoun is boring and boring in desperation, health is hardly excellent.

They Did not Teach much about Woodpeckers in Israel. Not about Musk-Oxen Either

WE MAY study such statements and hold our breath till things fall into place, if that is all there is to understanding things. But do not try to hold your breath forcibly at all. Maybe realisations that truly matter comes out of the wood like very discreet woodpeckers - by themselves they come and tap along. So "Go to the woodpeckers, see their fare and get wiser."
That is a solid and all right message. Note that a woodpecker is not so stupid that it tells untruth about mustard seeds in your face, Nor does it boast of ants lessons. It eats ants instead.
They really did not know much about ants in ancient Israel. Face the facts rather than succumb to drivel.

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler ...
How long will you lie ...? [Proverbs 6:6-9]

The working ant has indeed a ruling queen. If you assert it, you are on the path to wisdom. Also, if you study a book on how proverbs in the Bible came about, you may read for yourself that many of them were just put in his mouth. They were not all made by him. Then you will be wiser. [Ebl "Proverbs"]
Assert yourself boldly enough to matter on your own behalf as well as can well-nigh be. The salope (French: prostitute, hooker, slattern, slut, bitch, whore, etc.) does not do that. Some people obviously sell themselves short. It looks like a very bad bargain. You are permitted to do very well.
On the pavement to success, "every little helps" at best. If you add woodpecker proverbs to the things you listen to at night, the lights off and lying in bed, you can wake up refreshed next morning. After five rounds of such gentle listening, the "spray" of common sense tends to enter the long-time memory (LTM), and then you are able to recall a lot of them better, and have them at your disposal too. By good proverbs and similar gist you can gather wisdom by letting a tape recorder or mini disc do the toilsome parts. Yours to lie and listen. Have a go at it, that is: Give it a try and see if it is true, and how far it helps. It is a learning method you have got tips from, at any rate.

Opposed to neat studies: Prejudice

Observations in proverbs and fairy tales

MEMORABLE conclusions are worth something. And not chasing windmills.

Modern science is like a huge mill; it mills hypotheses.

Let the ocean inside the heart bring the needed wisdom and understanding.

Garden birds too can have much understanding. That is their role in fairy tales too - to express good choices and give counsels on your shoulder in their kindness.

You have perhaps grasped that woodpeckers may be signs of insect attacks. If you didn't know about that, the sign (indication) of insect attacks can be wasted. Much depends on the seeing eye and not-roving, observant mind otherwise too.

"Grrr!" is a message we seldom hear in the song of birds, but do not leave out the birds can be other than glad too. Fairness, love and delight is not all there is to a bird's life either.

We think the songs that make the heart glad are tall pieces of art, no matter who sings them.

If you are surrounded by lovely birds that chirp and sing all year long, that is good for you. What is more, ancient Indian source books speak of such sceneries as fit for sexual dalliance. If you live in a place where lovely birds chirp and sing, maybe you should learn to become harder - mating tends to result in that.

Opposed to neat studies and research, old superstitions and prejudices unfold as attitudes to this and that.

Learn a lesson from King Solomon, the man the Bible calles the wisest on earth ever. He did not get it all right about ants. He also fell into idolatry and ruined his dynasty by it, says the Bible. So beware of double-talk. There is much of it in the Bible, but should not be in science.

The art of observing is had by just being there, generally aware, and doing or very, very little so as to find out. That is how excellent observations may come to the few who can stand that sort of heat.

Jesus uses sparrows to instruct his gang. Jesus also insists that the fair follower may surpass himself. So feel free to study woodpeckers and canary birds and much else. Woodpeckers have a lot of information to bring. [John 14:12]

A Children's Story about Jesus Woodpecker

"Thank You, Little Jesus Woodpecker!"

A man recounts:
"Once I was sitting by myself on a hill in a wood. Then I noticed a "tap-tap-tap" on a fir leg nearby. I took a closer look. It was a little woodpecker. Later I called him Jesus.
Some of the manners of Jesus Woodpecker were exactly like those of a gentleman, in other words some lord: Very discreet, having markedly staccato utterances without getting concussions - Maybe a stiff neck and repeated tapping and flapping. There and then in the wood he appeared to be the only lord (gentleman) around."
I could use that years later among victims of dirty business. Whatever happened to that Jesus after I left the hill and moved to other countries, I don't know, but he is surely dead now - woodpeckers don't live that long.
I thought "Jesus is dead." How true:
"Jesus attacked hard surfaces, and argued with the trunklike Pharisees in ways that may remind us of an ardent, red-headed woodpecker."
Also, an old gospel says:

"Split a piece of wood; I am there. [The Gospel of Thomas, section 77]

Literature
Mum: Buzan, Tony. Make the Most of Your Mind. Rev. ed. London: Pan, 1988.
Tor: Buzan, Tony. Speed Reading. Rev. ed. London: David and Charles, 1988.
Uy: Buzan, Tony. Use Your Head. New, rev. ed. London: BBC Books, 1989.

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