Several years ago, I was reading the morning newspaper and I glanced at the title of a small article as I was turning the page. The article was just three sentences long and would have been easy to miss, but the title set my teeth on edge, “Bird Gums Up Batch of Toothpaste”. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to gag or gargle, but I knew I wasn’t ready to turn the page just yet, so I took a gander at the piece.
“A bird in the works ruined 180,000 pounds of toothpaste at Procter & Gamble’s Iowa City plant. The remains of the bird were discovered last Friday in a vat of Gleem toothpaste when employees were doing a quality control check. The system was flushed about 15 times to make sure all the feathers were gone. Normal production has resumed.”

Though many details are missing, I suspect fowl play. Now that we know that this is possible, perhaps we should recommend more frequent quality control checks. When the issue relates to what we squeeze on our toothbrushes, put in our mouths, and vigorously apply to our teeth, let us encourage more proctoring and less gambling at the toothpaste plant.

By the way, you’ll be happy to learn that four out of five dentists surveyed recommend the removal of bird body parts before brushing. I hope your dentist isn’t the fifth one who sees no problem with this additive from an aviary. Giving the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the dissenting dentist just thinks it is more efficient to simultaneously brush your teeth while flossing with feathers. Just wondering, does anybody else want to rinse your teeth with a big swig of mouthwash right about now?

Returning to the violated vat, let us acknowledge the amazing amount of damage done by one small bird who flew off course. After fifteen flushes of a titanic tank and 180,000 pounds of discarded toothpaste, Gleem glistens again with more whitener and less wings. If I did my computations correctly, there are 2,880,000 ounces in 180,000 pounds. That means about 480,000 six-ounce tubes of toothpaste were washed away because of one misguided bird.

Clearly, a minor mistake can create a major mess. And sometimes the seemingly small bad messes we make with others often require a good amount of cleanup. We can all recall occasions when the problem was not the tainted toothpaste in our mouth; it was our foot inserted there. Perhaps we made a careless comment, a statement fueled more by emotion than reality, an angry assertion or attack, or an ill-advised attempt at humor that ended up hurting someone. A simple flippant word or, back to our flying friends, a senseless flipped bird, can provoke a strong response.

A disoriented bird in the middle of Iowa is not all that different from many of us when we get off course and dive into dangerous territory. It doesn’t turn out positively for us, and it may end up negatively affecting many others. Of course, we all occasionally fly off course. May we limit the number of bad landings by charting our course more carefully and correcting it when necessary. When we use our heads at the beginning, we may reduce the times we find ourselves in over our heads at the end.