Old sayings explained I: Two birds with one stone

Welcome to what I hope will be a recurring theme in my blog, but what I fear might become another one-time mega-stupid topic. I will be examining old sayings, and dissecting them, trying to get at what's really going on there, anyway.

Today: "Two birds with one stone."

First off, this is different from "Seven in one blow," which is quite different, and possibly a topic for another day. Here, we're talking birds (two) (2), and stones (one) (1).

Second, one presumes that this is talking about actually throwing stones and birds, and also actually hitting them! Although they're probably even talking about killing these birds, I'm going to sustitute in some kind of stunning. Almost like in the cartoons, when the cat gets an anvil dropped on his head, and all of a sudden, he's got these little birds tweeting around his head... Wait, I can see that this won't work. Tell you what, in my illustrations, I'll represent "being stunned" with a kind of red Spidey-sense thing. That will indicate that the bird has been "gotten". (whisper: "Killed. Shhhh...")

So now the question becomes: Who throws rocks at birds, anyway? No, that's not really it - we know the answer to that - old people, when they were young. They even had a saying about it. Sheesh. No, the question is, how can you throw one (1) rock and "stun" two (2) birds? Obviously, it's something of an accomplishment, because they don't generally make sayings about stuff like "one lake with one stone, from just at the shoreline", but how is it done?

I have a number of theories. Please follow along, and save your questions until after.

Theory 1.
In this theory, the stone is thrown at the first bird at such an angle that it bounces off in a comic manner and clunks the second bird right on the noggin. This theory is unlikely, because if bird the second sees bird the first get clobbered, it's likely to scarper before the stone can reach it. And really, you'd have to bean a lot of first birds before you could get the right kind of bounce. This one can be ruled out.


Theory 2.
This theory requires that the birds in question have their heads kind of huddled together, in order to provide what roughly amounts to a single target. Do birds make out, or even hold whispered conversations? I don't think so, so that kind of rules this one out. Maybe if you crazy-glued their heads together an hour or so before you started hucking rocks around, but then the saying would be "two birds with one stone and some crazy glue beforehand", and it's not. So this one's out.


Theory 3.
This theory is just silly. Basically, you throw the rock at one bird so hard that it (the first bird) careens smack into the second bird with enough force to "stun" it. (Hence the arrow in bird-coloured brown.) This is so obviously faulty that I'm not going to bother refuting it. Stupid theory 3.


Theory 4.
This one is the most plausible. It involves simply what the saying says, two (2) birds and one (gigantic) stone. If the stone is big enough, there's no problem hitting two (or more!) birds. If you consider an asteroid to be just a really big stone, then I wouldn't see a problem with saying something like "2,948,441 birds with one stone." I guess it's then just a problem of how you'd throw the stone, but that's why we have catapults and mangonels and tall cliffs and those big Acme slingshots that never worked for the coyote. I'd elaborate further, but you get the gist.


There we have it. "Two birds with one stone" could be more accurately stated, "two birds with one asteroid". Saying deconstructed, mystery solved. Tune in next time.