[Dujon] Indeed, I'm sure that in your neck of the woods ants will be particularly efficient at cleaning up. I agree feathers are a bit different, but they must be destroyed fairly quickly if only because otherwise we'd be up to our necks in them. Also they are pretty much pure keratin which, despite its toughness, is none the less protein and so crying out to be recycled. I'm now into speculation, but I would suspect insects & bugs are likely to be the cleaning crew and will reprocess the feathers into chitin etc.
Surely there's someone in the morniverse who can add a bit more scientific rigour at this point.

Big fleas have little fleas,
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so, ad infinitum.
The_Siphonaptera

[pen] My old dad used to recite that one to me..

[Softers] Mine too. Is it a dad thing?

When dads recite cute poems
To their children oh so clever
They then recite them to their own
And on and on for ever.

[p,S & P] Please accept my heartfelt thanks for your most edifying contributions. ;)

[Duj] Graag gedaan. I love the collective brain of this place.

So do I, though it's often somewhat of the variety known as scatter.

Poems I learned when I was little were "Eletelephony," "Ooey Gooey," and "A Peanut Sat on a Rail Road Track." The one my Daddy really liked to recite was "Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts."

I enjoy all this doggerel
As much as tasty custard
I like to read the silly words
That [Pen] and [Dujon] mustered.

If all the world were apple pie
And all the sea were ink
And all the trees were bread and cheese
What would we have to drink?

I find it all so flattering
That you so like that poem
But this could take a battering
If scoured with fine-toothed comb.

how about a new game (to replace the terminally ill holiday anagrams) in which we can record the wonderful aphorisms passed on by our parents (whether in verse or prose). It might make a useful repository of knowledge. Or it might not.
One favourite from my dad is "If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs."