The Softer Side of Pensiero

Now for the scary part. Well...whatever. So we're in the aviary, trying to make our way to the exit, when we see two cute little tiny baby birds on the ground. They have spindly legs and are walking around and they are very precious. Then we see mommy. And daddy. Lastly, we see a third baby who has wondered off and is between us and the exit. I think nothing of it as we admire them, but then I hear the call - the call of a mommy bird warning her baby birds that DANGER is coming. At this point, unfortunately, I am inadvertently standing between the lone baby and the rest of the family. As the mom's call gets louder and more frequent (remember, these birds are no bigger than 6 inches tall, the babies being much smaller) I realize they feel threatened by us. I decide to crouch down to try and show them that I'm a friend, not a foe. Big mistake. That must be the "predator" stance to this species. (I must have been thinking of how to act around shy puppies.) The mom starts wailing again, the baby is panicking and won't walk past me to join her family, and NOW the dad is mad. He starts chirping at me too and then starts spreading his wings and slowly coming toward me. I feel pretty certain that if this continues he may peck at my bare calves, and this is not what I had imagined when we embarked on this journey. By now I am verbally telling the baby that it's safe to walk past me and simultaneously squealing a little bit to gene (who is about 2 feet behind me taking pictures) about how we're probably not going to get out without getting bitten. The chirps and wails are now at about 80 decibels, I'm wondering why these birds are on the ground instead of in the air, the baby is still in panic mode and dad is getting closer and closer. The closer I get to the exit, the closer I get to the baby, and therefore invite the dad's attack. There's no way out. Finally, out of sheer fear, the baby runs past me to his mom (after I've begun to scurry a little toward it and the door), and we shuffle out of there before the dad decides to eat us up. Or bite us or whatever. It was quite a comical ordeal and, fortunately, Gene captured quite a bit of it digitally. So here is the montage:

That was fun, I'm glad we're all safe. Our very favorite part of the zoo today was seeing the elephants in some of their day-to-day activities, but I'll let geno do the talking for that one. (Give him a day or two...while I'm typing leisurely, he's working on his study for our Sunday night Cal-Tec class. He'll get to the elephants in no time!) Here's a teaser picture of him with the elephants in the background. Gene loooooooves elephants!

Special thanks goes out to my mom and dad who let us borrow their new Nikon D40 for our excursion today. Thanks!