Read the Glyphics on My Carapace

I'm a reptile for Christ sake. Do I look like an amphibian to you. Do I?

I got news for ya, I don't metamorphosize. I am what I am. I'm not larva or any of that shit. I never become a tadpole.

Oh, I get it. You figure that because I don't look like a goddamned snake and crawl around on my belly that I can't be a reptile. I don't crawl. I walk around on my goddamned legs. I come with my own shell. I'm not some kind of newt who slimes around without a shell until all of a sudden a shell grows on my freakin' back. No way, I've got the shell from the first time I hit the land which is where I was born. The shell grows with me and tells the story of my life in glyphics on the carapace.

You hear me, I'm born on the land not in the effing water and I come out of an egg...an egg with a shell not that jelly ass larva crap that frogs slime there way out of.

And yeah, even though I spend a lot of time underwater, I'm not a goddamned fish. I can get around on land.

I must admit though. I am a little differrent from my reptile pals. They say I hibernated too long or picked out the wrong place for sunning and that's why my shell is all fucked up with the flaps and shit. I covered myself with too much mud trying to cool of on a day too hot for basking as long as I did because I was too vain to slide back into the pond with all the rest of 'em. Bullfrogshit. 

One thing they don't know or they knew and forgot is that birds started out as reptiles so at one point one of our ancestors got the idea that it might be cool to fly around. When they got that idea, they decided to start growing wings. This process began with shell flaps and a million years later, they used their wings to get the hell out of the water except for some of em who still take an occasional dip. Believe me, it ain't easy to grow wings. Ya get a lotta shit from jealus assholes.

"Oh look at you," they say "too good for the goddamned pond are ya. Tryin' to get the hell outta here?"

Others just ignore me and pretend that I don't exist when they surface near me, they just turn around and dive back into the pond.

I can't help my heritage.

We were the ones who started the whole wing thing and truth be told, I am getting sick of this goddamned pond and I would like to fly. I know, it's impossible but you gotta start somewhere. I've already passed my flaps on to a couple of my babies and they'll pass them on to a couple of their sand then all of a sudden in the blink of a million goddamned years another one of us will emerge from the water and fly away.