grandmas

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Cement mixers and falcons



Masters of the sky
So my granddaughter and I knew we were early to the Hutchings Museum free bird show.
Swim team practice ended at 10 a.m. and the show wasn't supposed to start until 11 a.m. — at least, that's what I thought.
I had read about it on the city website and in an email I received from the museum.
I told my daughter about it and she agreed to bring the other granddaughters and the baby and see the show with us.
I reserved a whole row of chairs and we sat down to wait.
We played a game on my phone and we waited in the shade.
Other people with little kids started to fill in the seats around us.
Only another 30 minutes to go.
Then a lady came out and pinned up a sign that said: "Bird Show at 12 and 3 p.m."
We all reacted.
"What?"
"We're sorry," the lady said. "The information on the website was wrong. The museum opens at 11 a.m. but the bird show doesn't start until noon."
"But?"
Who's there?
We all looked at one another, the 50-70 of us gathered with small children and babies in metal chairs.
"We don't want to wait another hour..."
She sensed our dismay and potential hostility and retreated inside. "Maybe they'll come out and do a mini-show," she tossed at us as she left.
We all waited fairly hopelessly. What do you do?
After another 20 minutes, the bird guy came out. Yay! He was bearing an owl on his arm and leading several other people with hawks and hooded heads.
He started to talk, to tell us to hold down the noise because the birds get worried when there's chaos.
That was just as a cement mixer on the other side of the lawn starting backing in to dump cement on a project at the Legacy Center.
The rumbling and roar made it very hard to hear.
Ben Woodruff and friend
It also made the birds nervous. They communicated their distress by fluttering and flapping as the bird man tried to tell us about them: how owls have colors only visible with black light and how falcons can drop on their prey at 300 miles an hour.
They did alright and we enjoyed the show but I'm thinking maybe there needs to be some better communication going on here between the humans.
Scheduling 101?

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