Size Matters

One day we went to the zoo with a simple mission: feed the lemurs some dates. Naturally, we immediately ran into a bit of a situation.

The lemurs, to be fair, didn’t go without their treats. But right off the bat, our attention was hijacked by a pair of jet-black, big-eyed parrots. One of them was loudly squawking at us from behind the bars in fluent parrot, clearly expecting a proper response.

My wife, the one in charge of logic on our trips, observed: we’ve got plenty of dates, and only two parrots. With that, she calmly offered the most vocal of the pair a generously sized date.

The parrot confidently grabbed its prize in its strong, handsome beak and froze. The date simply wouldn’t fit through the bars. Not at any angle, despite the parrot’s best efforts.

In that single moment, its eyes cycled through the entire emotional spectrum: joy and disappointment, delight and despair, triumph and the sudden collapse of all hope, and a slowly growing flicker of disgust. If this had been a video, I would’ve titled it Fear and Loathing in a Parrot Cage without a second thought.

Well, yes, not exactly a happy ending.

I’m pretty sure the bars are spaced that way for a very deliberate reason, to stop visitors from feeding the birds just anything. Clearly, the local parrots have had their fill of tourist surprises and have officially switched to a strict diet.

So, moral of the story: don’t feed birds random stuff, and always check the size of your treat.

Thank you for stopping by!

Tenerife, Spain.
June, 2011.
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