The Tissot watch on the Psychiatrist's wrist indicated that 45 minutes had passed.

"We're running out of time for today. Aren't you going to tell me about the bird-creature?"

Mario removed his hat and twisted it in his hands before placing it beside him on the couch. After a long pause he began to speak in Italian.

(translated)

"The dream was always the same except for the people in it. Sometimes it would be Luigi. Sometimes Toad or the Princess. Sometimes it would be me. Whoever it was would ascend a vine up the side of a vast tower. At the top it was tranquil. A welcome rest after fighting through scores of masked, unfamiliar monsters. At the far end of the roof was a door shaped like an eagle's head. Standing in front of it was a....thing. Not quite a bird but not quite a lizard...I don't know what to call it. It was a sickly shade of pink with a bow on its head. It was female in appearance but it spoke in a series of honks, snorts, and sentence fragments. It threatened me, verbally, in a man's voice and issued forth to fight."

Mario paused for a moment and reached to the side to retrieve his hat. He nervously put it back on his head, adjusted it for a moment and continued.

"The odd part about this thing was its mouth. I know most birds lay eggs out of their cloaca. Reptiles too. This thing had a massive cock of a cloacal maw where its mouth should have been. Indeed it seemed to double as a mouth when it tried to make words."



"I figured it would be a quick fight if I could find something to throw. The stones that made up the castle were firmly mortared in place. I started back toward the vine to descend the tower but something was different about this part of the world. I couldn't approach the vine. Just then I heard a sound like a large cork popping out of the bung on a wine cask. I turned around just in time to get smacked in the chest by an egg the size of a bocce ball. I was thinking 'that couldn't have come from its head' just as it inhaled deeply and with a ploomping sound it propelled another egg in my direction. Angrily I caught the mucus-covered egg, ran up to the thing and smashed it's fucking head in. I would have to do that two more times before it finally died and yielded the key to the eagle door."

--Excerpt from Psychiatrist's report to the State of New York Board of Corrections dated 4 February 1994.

So. Birdo. Not quite a bird but not quite a reptile. Forced by the mushroom-induced dreams of an immigrant plumber to vomit forth his/her own young in the defense of an obese toad-creature and his menagerie of sex-slave pixies in a jar. Not quite a man and not quite a woman (I'll just assume "she" is correct from this point on.) Not quite a true Mario character but featured alongside the whole cast anyway. Birdo started as an insignificant character in an insignificant game that never even got released here in the United States. Luck was on his/her side, however as the Japanese decided that Super Mario 2 (Japanese Version) was just too hard for us lazy, stupid Americans. So what we ended up getting was a different game with Mario and company pasted in to make a quick buck for Nintendo. It ended up being a pretty good game even though there was not one fire flower in the whole fucking thing. Birdo appeared in virtually every level as a persistent bastard who just would not yield to Mario's gigantic ego. Somehow Birdo proved to be more than a figment of Mario's imagination...



Birdo is the embodiment of something that just doesn't "belong." In short, she was dealt a horse shit hand of cards and managed to turn them into a full house. She wakes up every day, she plays tennis and races the go-karts, she just does the best she can. Gone are the days of trying to kill Mario by forcing massive eggs up though her digestive system and spewing them out in a cloud of mucus and spit. If only other minor video game bosses had it so easy.

She had a prominent role a boss in SMB2. That was followed by smaller roles in Wario's Woods, Super Mario RPG, and Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. After that she retired to a life of Tennis, Karts, and Mini-games (Mario Party.) In the meantime other bosses like Bowser and Ganon still get their asses handed to them on a semi-regular basis. There's no rest for the bosses that make sense in this business, I suppose.

So, in the interest of keeping this short I'll get to the point. Birdo teaches us that it's best to make your mark in the most ridiculous way possible and achieve enough notoriety to be challenged by your former enemies to games of Tennis and Go-Kart races. That's one to grow on.

I guess.

Also, Cocks.