Bristol based Scriptwriters can send in 5-10 min monologues on the theme of dating and romance
for theatre show on Valentine's Night 2015....
Any advice very gratefully received....
BIRDS FLYING HIGH, YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS
PRofessor A Twitcher, middle-aged Zoololgist...
(On his knees, in camouflage gear, checking a point in the distance occasionally through large binoculars, talking in hushed tones)
My specialty is the "Cathartes Aura", of the family "Cathartidae" , common throughout
the Americas, otherwise known as the "New World Turkey Vulture"...
The close study of the Turkey Vulture is not a crowded field... In fact the Turkey Vulture itself
will try not to look at another Turkey Vulture if it can help it.
Therefore, there was only us, my wife and myself, keeping them under observation...
I say "was" and "us"... The Turkey Vulture will mate for life, unlike the "Middle Aged
Ornithologist", the "Ornithologus Menopausa ", always a flightey bird,
who will have many partners, if she thinks she remains unobserved....
I first noticed something was amiss when she unaccountably refused to accompany me on a 6 month field trip, researching the flocks colonising the massive rubbish landfill sites on the
outskirts of Mexico City...What a fascinating chance to probe their habitat, sometimes as much as
waist deep in it...
I brought back a breeding pair to the zoo, but the female just wouldn't settle for what she had.
She flew herself, relentlessly against the harsh wire-netting of her cage...Perhaps she was
pining, pinning for the toxic waste dumps, or maybe I had brought the wrong male back with her...
The "Canon Net" is an indiscriminate tool to aid the feathered heart.
Or I could be being over-sensitive, the Turkey Vulture is an opportunist scavenger,
feeding off rotten carcasses or preying on slow moving easy meat near its home
environment . Much like my Wife. She ran off with the Actor playing "Toad" in "Toad of
Toad Hall", the Summer Production in the Picnic Pavilions in the Zoo Gardens....
I don't know what he had to offer...? Apart from a "Hall"...But, if she wants to trust her last few
eggs to someone happy to spawn in a large group in a puddle at the side of the road...
an Actor, -that's up to her....
They're living out the back of a van now, while he's touring "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
round Juvenile Detention Centres on Tyne and Weir... She says she's never felt more free,
I've got to send her binoculars on... They share their evenings on the sand dunes of
Whitley Bay, between counting Arctic Turns and Shags...
I've thrown myself into dating, aided by my understanding of the mating rituals and
courtship dances of the New World Turkey Vulture...
I have my very beady eye on a cute Entomologist on the Zoo Pub Quiz Team...
Between us we should have the birds and bees covered..
I would have seen the other males on the team off with my knowledge of 1990's Pop Trivia...
But they were a green young Chameleon-Keeper, who preferred to merge into the background
and a very dull Botanist from the Carnivorous Plant House, who just sat there with his mouth open,
catching flies.
I took the young lady back to my little nest, my caravan behind the seal enclosure, which I
had decorated with my collection of Stock, Aitken and Waterman posters.
I admit, I was a little hot and bothered, but I remembered the Vulture trick of "Urohydrosis",
defecating on their own legs to aid heat loss...and it worked!... I told her about it and we both laughed, which eased the tension...
Then she mentioned how the Preying Mantis eats her mate after copulation, then I laughed,
but she just stared at me while licking her hands and cleaning her head with them...
She didn't stay though, I think she was put off by my stuffed, female Turkey Vulture specimen....
Somewhere, on the outskirts of Mexico City a male of the species is as free as a bird....
They mate for life, until one of them dies....
...Yes, it all seems quite quiet over there on the beech, I'll just swoop over and cut the break
cables on that van...
(He gets up, carrying a large pair of wire-cutters, hidden until now and leaves the stage)
the Theatre in Bristol is very close to the Zoo so I'm hoping for extra points for that...