A Bunch of Bird Brains

We have been telling the boys for months that we would take them to the aviary. Unfortunately, life happens and every trip was canceled by terrible weather, someone being sick, or last minute commitments to do other things. But yesterday was finally the day. And they were so excited that they finished their Saturday jobs in record time . . . with no whining. Just for that I would take them to the aviary every week!

I've been told that the aviary isn't as fun as the zoo, but my family happens to disagree because we like birds. It's not that we don't like the elephants and the tigers because we do, we just happen to really like birds as well. Even with our common interest, the differences in our children are clear. Daniel's attitude toward the whole thing is, "Look at that cool bird!" Nathan prefers the, "Can I chase that bird and scare it away?" approach. Even Matthew is into the whole bird watching thing, although I suspect his thoughts are more along the lines of, "Oooo, I really want to get in there and touch that thing!"


My favorite part of the day was watching the big boys feed the pelicans. Every day at 1:00 the pelicans get fed and for $2, you can help. The pelicans have been trained to respond to a spoken command, basically coming home for dinner when they are called. So everyone stood on the bridge over the pond and hollered, "Snappers!" And amazingly enough, the pelicans came. The personality differences between Daniel and Nathan were evident in this, as in all things. Even though he was wearing a rubber glove, Daniel would use two fingers to gingerly lift a dead fish out of the bucket and flip it as quickly as possible over the railing. Nathan, on the other hand, would grab the fish around the middle with his whole hand, aim carefully, and give it a good overhand throw straight towards the pelicans' mouths. (If you look really closely, you can see that Nathan has just chucked a fish with gusto and Daniel is all icked out, holding a fish with as little hand contact as possible.)


So for any of you looking for a diversion, check out the aviary. You might just find that you are a bird brain to.