Animals

A lot of people I know probably don't know this about me, but I have somewhat of an affinity with animals. I've also been around animals starting from when I was an infant, where my father would bring back turtles that he would encounter on the road, on his way home. (Yes, life is really that idyllic in Oklahoma. And yes, we always let them go after a day or so.)

This isn't to say I'm Dr. Doolittle, as a fair share of animals have definitely died in my care. In terms of actual pets, I've owned a parakeet, a chameleon, a ton of goldfish, a tortoise, a dog, and a couple of hamsters. My encounters with wild animals include a pigeon, a gopher, a pair of doves, and some lizards.

I'll share one particularly amazing story, one involving the pigeon. The scene is NYC in the fall of when I was about 4 years old. I was walking with my mother through the middle of a park, one hand holding my mother's. As we were walking along, we would of course disturb whatever pigeons were in our path and cause them to take flight. As one pigeon nearby to where I was walking started to fly away, for whatever reason, I reached out with my free hand and grasped at it. Imagine my surprise when the next thing I know, I have a pigeon's wing in my hands. My mother of course, goes crazy, yelling at me to let it go. Something about it being dirty, but I didn't care, this was my prize. I wasn't going to just let it go. That is until the pigeon (which, amazingly can stay aloft with just one wing flapping,) zoomed around (and remember, I'm still holding on to one of it wings, so it actually bent my arm,) and started to beat my face with its free wing. After a few seconds of that I let it go. Ahh pidgey, I hardly knew ye.

Yeah, so how many people can claim to have caught a bird in midflight? I can. :)