Enough

When I was a child, I joined a friend for dinner. “I don’t eat onions”, my friend said to his mother, with all the confidence of a royal politely declining an inappropriate offering. “Wait, can we do that?” I thought as the three of us held still in the tense moment before a parent answers a child’s challenge. The mother’s exact response escapes me, but I certainly remember that it was not the curt, strongly worded remark I would have received had I dared to utter the same sentence in my house.

I was reminded of that moment shortly after witnessing an elegant tern parent feeding a juvenile. The feeding wasn’t a dramatic affair. In fact, it was just the opposite. A parent approached the beach and quickly spotted its offspring, which was conveniently perched on the outskirts of the colony and away from the gulls. The food exchange was simple, peaceful, relaxed. The extra time allowed the juvenile to reposition the fish several times. Once oriented, the juvenile swallowed the meal in three gulps. Parent and juvenile were now free to rest and relax before rejoining the colony. However, this juvenile had other ideas.

Within seconds of swallowing the fish, the emboldened juvenile raised its head toward the parent and vocalized loudly. The sound was a short, shrill bark that grabs your attention and was an obvious request for more food. It’s likely that the parent noticed the building offshore fog and met that request with an obvious denial. 

The adult bird partially raised its wings in a threat display while emitting its own vocalization. This slightly lower-pitched, flat-toned bark carried far more authority than that of the juvenile. Stomping a foot into the wet sand emphasized the command and showed that this parent had had enough.

Undeterred, the frustrated juvenile wasted no time in responding. Ratcheting up the demand, the post-fledgling stepped boldly toward the adult. The young bird didn’t just emit another shrill bark but unleashed a continuous stream of the sharp squeaks heard earlier. It was a sound that sliced through you, overwhelmed your senses and demanded your capitulation. A sound that was uncomfortable and almost impossible to ignore. And yet, this parent did just that.

The parent was no longer a bird, but an object. A steel-eyed object that withstood all the juvenile’s misplaced aggressions. As the tension built, the colony waited for a response. A bird that had witnessed the entire event smartly walked away. The parent remained motionless, exploiting the expectations of the moment. A moment conjured by a juvenile that was either more grown than we thought or more confident than it was entitled to be.

Suddenly, the unfazed parent, standing upright and looking resolute, turned and marched in the opposite direction. An infuriated juvenile was left to vocalize into the void. The squeaks that had previously overwhelmed, now dissipated harmlessly into the thickening fog. This juvenile had eaten its last meal of the day.