Vera, 5: “Mummy. Do you know about the ego?”
Oh. My. Lord. Here we go. How the…?
“You know. The bird.”
Phew. Close call.

The Ego is a plump bird, about four or five inches tall, that preens its feathers almost constantly in support of its belief that it is the prettiest of all the birds.
As a result of this belief, the Ego particularly hates peacocks, hummingbirds and Claudia Schiffer.

The Ego however, has a larger cousin, the Super-Ego. Looking vaguely like its smaller cousin in a pair of red underpants, the Super-Ego does not suffer from the same vanity, but imagines that it knows what everyone else ought to be doing.
Quite commonplace, these can be found anywhere where the habitat supports such a beast : near married men, at other parents’ houses or at your daughter-in-law’s.

Both Ego and Super-Ego are commonly mispronounced: the word has a short ‘E’ as in ‘bed’ not a long ‘e’ as in ‘weed’. The name comes from the appalling lack of reproductive self-awareness of the female and is said to sound like the call she makes when first laying.

Inspired by the musings of a minor groskoparian.