Andrews Birds

We first discovered Andrews dislike of birds when we first got to the zoo and went to the aviary section. He jumped at every bird that he saw from the pigeons on the ground eating crumbs to the birds in their cages. Most of the birds are of course totally enclosed in their cages but some cages you can enter and look at them flying around. Seems a little dangerous to me...mostly because of the obvious repercussions of standing under flying birds but it makes for a fun experience. You go in the gate and are standing in a cage of sorts then you go through another gate and into the cage. Like at the dog park to keep the animals from getting out. Well, we went in one that had some owls in them. You had to really look to see the owls but one was hiding the corner right above the exit gate. When Andrew saw it he tore out of that cage as fast as he could and stood in the little cage between the two gates. He looked like a shark diver! He was okay to look at them from afar until we stood in front of the Condor cage and that huge Condor opened its wings...I knew little boys had high pitched screams but wow! By this time the poor kid had had enough of birds. Unless he was looking at large animals he didn't want to leave the zoo cart that we had rented. We stopped at the savanna exhibit to look at the giraffes and gazelle roaming around. Like most zoos these two peacocks where strolling around freely. Andrew didn't notice them at first, he was happy to watch the giraffes. The female peacock walked up to him and stood next to his cart. Andrew looked over and saw this huge bird standing within hands reach of him. He jumped from the cart and bolted scaring the peacock. The peacock started to run, Andrew started to run, both bird and boy thought they where being chased! They ran back and forth along the sidewalk each scaring the life out of each other! I was trying to grab Andrew, he was screaming and trying to get away from the bird, the bird was squawking and running from Andrew, people are taking pictures....it was crazy but funny in the end!