I always knew I was going to wind up as a dotty middle aged lady with a bird in her hat....only I didn't know it would be a real bird! Actually, yesterday, there were as many as three at a time perching on my straw hat. We went to "Parakeet Landing" at the Baltimore Zoo with Rob and Theresa. It was a great time!
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The exhibit is just like being in a bird cage and you can buy little popsicle sticks with seeds glued onto it to encourage the parakeets to come land on you. There were also rosellas, finches and cockatiels in the aviary, but they were not as friendly as the parakeets. The Hub, who has issues dealing with our parakeets at home ( Dorothy bites him and Buckbeak is sort of indifferent to him), really enjoyed interacting with the parakeets and, in a classic "Hub" move, used his great height to reach up to feed some of the very shy rosellas who were keeping to the rafters of the temporary structure.

Anyway, the parakeets were also very drawn to my straw hat. I think that the trees where parakeets come from in the wild ( Australia! Who knew?) have fronds or leaves that are a little like a straw hat. I think it feels good on their little parakeet feet. Anyway, it was sort of a problem clearing all of them off of my head when we went out to see the other exhibits. And, of course, this whole scene delighted many of the little children who were visiting the birds....but what better use am I than to give a kid a laugh?

The Baltimore Zoo has fallen on hard times since I was last there. They had serious funding problems and almost lost their elephants. Theresa said it was all because of low attendance. It's sad. I have fond memories of the zoo. If I was ever serious about a guy back when I was single, I would propose the zoo as a date to see how the guy thought of animals - if he had any compassion for them, or if he just thought of them as objects. Or if he just thought I was stupid for having compassion for them - that was a last date!

Of course, I never got a chance to take The Hub there before we were married, but he had two dogs for whom he had built a dog house that had both heat and carpet....so I knew where he was on that question.

But these parakeets hardly seemed to know that they were enclosed. They had a lot of freedom and interaction, and there were pleanty of high places for them to fly up to if they didn't feel like hanging out with the people. I wonder what my parakeets would have thought of it?