# Digest whorl.v012.n129 *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 24 May 2001* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Jerry Friedman *24 May 2001, 10:15* ... > From: Jerry Friedman > Subject: Pajaro Cu > Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 12:30:19 -0700 (PDT) ... > en su preciosa gorjear: Sorry, should be "precioso". ... > The "piru", much used in Mexican traditional > medicine and witchcraft, appears to be _Schinus > molle_... Or maybe another tree of the genus Schinus. To answer Rostrum (Yahoo truncated the digest message), part of the point of the folk-tale is to explain bird behavior. The song I posted explains why the owl says "ticu-ticu" (and there may be a Spanish pun here, but I couldn't get my teacher to commit himself on the subject); Wijzer's version explains both why the owl says "cu" and why the "snake-eater bird" is silent. And it explains why you might name an invisible town Pajarocu. If there's anything else, I'm missing it. Jerry ---