national bird selected

The discovery by field researchers of a breeding pair of pygmy burrowing snow owls (nyctea scandiaca pyltaregina) in the Pylta The Terrible National Ecological Protection Area (PTTNEPA) has buoyed the spirits of the Grigovian people. “I remember, as a child, seeing these birds whilst vising relatives in the dizzyingly-high valleys north of Pyltagrad,” said Dorevtha Mouiryindt, 72, who now lives in the southern city of Pryaghdoyest. “Try as we did, my cousins and I could never catch a bird, let alone get close enough to touch one. They are wary, watchful, and quick – the perfect choice for our national bird.”

While technically part of the genus nyctea scandiaca, pyltareginae differ significantly. Brightly-colored plumage clusters around face and foot and lead edge of wing; to some observers, the birds resemble flamenco dancers dressed for carnival. (The birds appear to use the colorful bands during courtship and to demarcate territory.) “We find few opportunistic predators this size that have evolved such attention-getting plumage,” said Yue Zhishuou, 39, an ornithologist at the University of Stockholm. “But the birds, when they hunt during the day, hunt in packs, using tactics similar to those used by other top predators, including killer whales. After locating their prey, they fly away from it in different directions. Then, with piercing screams in their throats, they come floating back on wings of silent menace, dropping from the sky directly above their victim with talons snapping and beaks grasping for purchase. Most often, they run their quarry in circles until it trips over its own feet and collapses into a panting heap, whereupon they pounce.”

“The uhuiyendt are fascinating creatures,” said Hennu Yiptlend, Grigovia's Secretary of the Interior – Natural Resources, using the local name for the birds (uhuiyendt, pronounced oo-whoo-ee-yend-t). “They form family bonds that last for generations, they defend their territory with reckless ferocity, they use tools to reach deep into anthills, they can punch through a foot of iced-over snow while hunting vole in wintertime, and they do all these things dressed in bold plumage replete with dazzling bursts of color.” The minister tied our steppe ponies to a stunted tree just below the top of a wind-swept ridge. We walked to the summit and glassed down onto a flock of uhuiyendt hunting rodents in the sparse Autumn grasses. My host directed my gaze to where a few birds had chased a field mouse out into the open. They screeched and dove at it until the little beast – confused and panicking – ran into the waiting talons of a big, red female. In the early morning sun, her plumage was so bright that I had to lower my binoculars and blink the sunspots from my eyes. The owls started diving at us a few minutes later, loosing their piercing screams at ear level and chasing us off their ridge with quick efficiency. “These birds live nowhere else – they are ours alone,” said Mr. Yiptlend as we were working the horses down a series of switchbacks. “The flock we just saw will defend that ridge from other predators for the next three months but not bag from it, so that, when they return to hunt, vole is fat and mouse is lazy. There are few birds as fierce, efficient, and cunning as the uhuiyendt, few nations a resilient and egalitarian as Grigovia. Long live the People's Republic.” (For more information about the uhuiyendt, and to see pictures of its colorful plumage, please visit pyltaregina.avian.gv.)

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Grigovian fairy-tales 1

Davoyend of Grissend was a naughty boy. He'd show up late for school; he'd eat only bread and sweets, refusing all vegetables; and he'd steal his younger siblings' presents on the feast of old King Vuolvesst the Merciful, on the night of the winter solstice, when it was customary to exchange gifts.

'Happy Fest of Vuolvesst,' said Therr, Davoyend's younger brother, hoping for a kind word in return. The older son, however, as he was wont to do, reared back and punched the boy in the eye-socket, pushed him down the hill next to their house, and ran inside to raid his meager stash of loose liquorice sticks and peppermint bonbons wrapped in paper.
'Look at me, I am the greatest,' Davoyend yelled as his brother struggled through deep and swirling banks of snow. With brown and sugary juices staining his chin, the older child made as if to push his brother back down the hill. Therr tricked him, however, by feinting left but going right. Rushing through the gathering night back to the house, the young boy pulled the door closed behind him and ran to the fire, to warm up.
'You rush in here caked in snow,' said Ulentha, their mother, shaking her head at the wet footprints staining the rough, wooden planks. Her scolding completed, she resumed chopping vegetables for the mutton stew, a meal customary eaten on the Fest of Vuolvesst. 'Where is your brother?' she asked.
Therr, shivering violently as powdery snows turned to water and ran down the back of his shirt, tried to answer with words, but could only manage a croaking sound.
'Perhaps he went to atone for his sins at the shrine of the mountain spirit,' said Ulentha, bending to the dishes, their clatter keeping her from hearing Davoyend pounding weakly at the back door.

The next morning, the village watchman in the course of his rounds found Davoyend leaning against the wall of his parent's home, frozen stiff, his face stained with sugary juices, his mouth, for once, empty of venomous vituperation.

***

One evening, while following a faint animal path toward his home, woodsman Heiryath Bordendt tripped over a piece of string. The string had been strung across the path and attached to some bells: they chimed softly. From the surrounding bushes came suddenly a couple of men running, bows armed with arrows, hollow eyes flashing in gaunt faces. Finding a man instead of a deer sprawled on the ground at their feet, they decided to rob him.

Heiryath, however, was clever, and quick. As soon as he realized that the men meant him harm, he spun into a fighting crouch with his hunting knife and ax extended in front of him. Blinded by hunger and greed, the men charged. Heiryath knocked each man unconscious with the blunt side of his ax, but instead of causing them injury, he left them with the last of his food and a note telling the local green grocer to feed them and send to the woodsman the bill.

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Grigovians welcome winter

In the past, when greater Europe was wallowing in the cruel injustices of medieval depravity, winter in Grigovia was a time of communal sharing, a period of cooperative productivity. Even under the Soviet juggernaut's yoke, the people of this landlocked little republic managed to help one another out in times of scarcity, through diligent effort and clandestine communication maintaining a vast network of charity-driven black markets.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the old traditions still hold, that, when the first snows begin to fall in the dizzying mountain passes, the older high-valley denizens seal up their homes and hop buses into town while their younger counterparts break out snow-shoes and cross-country skis. “One learns to go without,” said ten year old Rathma Eroyip as she was carrying an armload of seasoned burning wood to an elderly neighbor's house. “I, for example, have come to terms with no longer being able to bicycle to school, and I know I must soon learn to ski so that I might continue attending classes in Grissend, which lies three kilometers to the east of here.” Rathma allowed us to escort her for the rest of the morning, during which she helped shovel out someone's back door, assisted in the manufacture of a thick woolen quilt, and learned how to attach and adjust the bindings on her first pair of cross-country skis. (The young lady's family had just recently moved up into the hills, to: “toughen these kids up a bit, and prepare them for life's exertions,” according to their mother.)

Wherever this news team went, Grigovians appeared to be contributing to the communal good in meaningful ways. We saw citizens handing out thick woolen blankets by the truckload, distributing baskets of hard cheeses and pickled vegetables in primarily immigrant neighborhoods, holding canned food drives and generally going out of their way to live up the notion that “Twigs in bundles become pillars”, Grigovia's unofficial national motto. “Instead of spending tax dollars on fleets of vehicles to plow the roads and contaminate the land with salts, we buried all power and telecommunications lines and created in even the smallest high-valley village satellite nodes for essential services where citizens can obtain medical care, educational materials, access to the national Wi-Fi network, and the materials needed to craft warm items for sharing with their elderly and disadvantaged neighbors,” said Qutomar Rastoyend, spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior's Winter Division. “Furthermore, we have added new buildings and installed new beds to the network of Care & Comfort facilities that stretches from Grig in the south to Pyltagrad in the north-west, where old and infirm alike can bed down for the winter, if they should so choose.” So it goes all across this fine little land: people bettering themselves by first bettering others.

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leisurely summer, “satisfying”

Choosing to lounge around in his boxer-shorts instead of going about his wood-chopping, garden-tending, and home-maintenance chores, 29 year-old Maryland native Frederick Rillenhof said just this morning that his summer of abject, sun-soaked leisure was far more satisfying than performing any of the duties he admitted were necessary to keep him alive through the upcoming winter. “I hope to have a job by fall,” the home-owner said while trying to find a way to make his window-mounted air-conditioning unit produce more cool air. ”And I'm going to need one to pay for all this electricity I'm using, and for all the heating oil I'll have to buy in order to keep this damn place warm when it starts to snow.”

Sitting by an open, southward-facing screen door of his four-bedroom home, Frederick, who lives alone, said he enjoyed feeling the cold air stream past him, because it cooled him off a bit before escaping into the blast-furnace heat outside. “I just love that,” he said while poking at a brand-new, touch-screen-equipped tablet computer. “Feeling the breeze that the A-C is making, knowing that I have a fridge full of food just waiting for me to eat. I got a call from my credit card company this morning asking for payment on last month's bill, but what are they going to do, cut me off? I pay my mortgage with that platinum card, bitches.”

While poking around in the tall weeds behind the house (after being shooed outside to pee unless we, “Wanted to go all the way up to the third floor to use that bathroom, since all the other ones are clogged”), this news team discovered a discarded ax and a decrepit bow-saw, both of which were rusting away atop a woodsman's sawhorse. Next to these forgotten tools was a large mound of good lumber, the ends of which were however beginning to show signs of rot. When we asked him about the wood wasting away in the backyard, Mr. Rillenhof declared that he was too busy watching a marathon session of a popular reality-television series that focuses on crab-fishing off the coast of Alaska to get to sawing or splitting anytime soon, and that he would handle it once the weather turned a bit cooler. He declined to comment on his vegetable garden, however, which was in a sorry state, indeed.

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