Jaybirds

The common bluejay is a frequent visitor to bird feeders of the South.  He’s a beautiful, striking bird, with a bold blue, white, and black pattern, but no one ever seems to exclaim over him.  Instead, he is mostly regarded as an obnoxious pest and nuisance – sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of birds.

Sometimes, under his nickname, “jaybird,” he enters Southern speech quite colorfully.  “Nekkid as a jaybird” is the first phrase that comes to mind, as in, “I made sure that young’un was in the tub before I turned my back for a second to get a towel, but before I turned around, there he was, nekkid as a jaybird, wet as a pond, and dripping all over the hardwood floor.” 

A word on terminology might be in order here.  The late Lewis Grizzard (1946-1994), the Sage of Moreland, Georgia, used to say that “naked” means one does not have any clothes on, while “nekkid” means one doesn’t have any clothes on and is up to something.   Your compiler has never heard of anyone being “naked” as a jaybird – it’s always “nekkid.”

Your compiler always wondered why it wasn’t “nekkid as a cardinal,” or a robin, a tufted titmouse, or a brown thrasher.  Soon after internet capabilities came into being, your compiler actually looked the question up, and found out that the phrase was “naked as a robin” till sometime in the 19^th Century, but that Mr. Bluejay replaced his red-orange-breasted cousin at that time.  But why?  One can only wonder.

Your compiler is not aware that anyone has ever killed, plucked, and eaten one of these birds to eat (except perhaps in a true “do anything to survive” situation), and cannot imagine why either bird was ever brought into the simile in this way; an earthworm, for example, seems a much more likely candidate for an animal exhibiting nakedness.    But a bird was chosen, and who from the South can honestly say he or she has not heard of someone being “nekkid as a jaybird” at some time or another?

But enough on that usage.  The other one your compiler wishes to comment on is one he heard his mother employ from time to time during his growing-up years, and which he thinks is wonderfully descriptive.  His late mother, who lived from 1939 until 2024, was a Fayette County original, and was renowned among those who knew her for saying what she thought when she thought it, for refusing to put up with much if any foolishness from anyone,  and for a sometimes obvious impatience with people whom she deemed flighty and flaky.    Sometimes, in dealing with one, she would reach the end of her rope and would say (privately, of course), “I swannee, if you put that man’s (or woman’s) brain in a jaybird, it’d fly backwards!”

Your compiler knows not whether anyone else’s mama said that, but his did, and consequently, whenever he sees a bluejay, he smiles, and then pauses for a moment to see which direction it is flying.