Editor’s Note (Updated 2025): This post originally ran in 2008, but the lessons (and the laugh) are still on point. I’ve dusted it off, added a cartoon, and updated the format so it’s ready for a new generation of ostriches. . Revised and edited May, 2025.

There’s an old myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand when danger comes. Some call it the ostrich mentality, when life hits too hard, we hide. I Googled it one day. Turns out, it’s not true. Ostriches don’t hide their heads when ‘the going gets tough.’ Too bad: it was a nice analogy.
Today is one of those days when I really wanted to do just that or crawl back into bed and burrow under the covers. Maybe if I just don’t look, all my troubles will disappear.
Disaster in the Kitchen
Last night I went into the kitchen and the floor was full of water. Upon investigation I found that the water heater was leaking. I wanted to have a full blown ostrich mentality and ignore the problem. Instead, I started grabbing towels to soak up the water. I don’t have 40 gallons worth of towels. It took forever to clean up, and the leak couldn’t have been going more than an hour or two.
The water tank (Kenmore Power Miser 6) isn’t very old, and I was hoping it was still under warranty. I called the number on the tank and gave them the information. Just my luck, the warranty expired in 2007. Of course, they couldn’t be reasonable about it.
Worn Out and Warrantied Out
That’s not the only glitch in the day, but no need to depress my faithful readers further. I think I’ve buried enough emotional debris under the covers to last us all a while.
On a side note, I copied the following from The Phrase Finder:
Embracing the Ostrich Mentality (Without the Sand)
Meaning: Refuse to confront or acknowledge a problem.
Origin: This comes from the supposed habit of ostriches hiding when faced with attack by predators.
The story was first recorded by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who suggested that ostriches hide their heads in bushes. Ostriches don’t hide, either in bushes or sand, although they do sometimes lie on the ground to make themselves inconspicuous. The myth likely started from people seeing them lower their heads to feed.
The story also leans on the idea that ostriches, and birds in general, are dumb. But that doesn’t hold up. Birds actually have a higher brain-to-body ratio than many animals. The myth claims the ostrich thinks if it can’t see the predator, the predator can’t see it.
Douglas Adams had fun with this in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, describing a creature called the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, which was “so mind-bogglingly stupid that it assumes that if you can’t see it, then it can’t see you.”
Today, I didn’t want to disappear. I just wanted to bury my head in the sand and pretend the problem wasn’t there if I couldn’t see it. Maybe it’s not stupidity. Maybe it’s strategic invisibility.
The ostrich mentality isn’t about being clueless; it’s about buying yourself time. There’s a messy grace in hitting pause, even when everything’s leaking and chaos is winning. I didn’t fix the water heater by hiding, but I did survive the day. And sometimes, that’s enough.
Have you ever had one of those days where everything breaks—literally? Tell me about it in the comments. Bonus points if it involved towels.
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Vicky you need to read my post on Walgreens – we had the same kind of day! blessings, marlene
I had four of those days in a row a while back. Four flats, four different tires, four days in a row. Pay day was nowhere in site. On the fourth day I walked away leaving my 97 ford explorer on the side of the road. I guess I was burying my head in the sand. I think people as a whole have only so much they can take before we can no longer take anymore. At that point we bury our heads in the sand so we have a chance to restart. Sometimes like in your case you weren’t able to just walk away from it. If you did it would ruin your floor. So later you may have ignored a different less urgent problem so you finally had the chance to reset yourself.