There have been a lot of birds around my area lately. There's more cardinals then I can remember seeing in about forever, and a pair of mallard ducks were waddling around the backyard of the house next to mine. I could see them as I sat writing. Mallard males are not gentlemen. He left the female to waddle along behind him. :-)
But my favorite are the Canadian geese. I've been told they mate for life, which is part of what endears them to me, but it's more than that. They're beautiful and majestic birds. When I was driving home from work the other day, there was a pair along the side of the road (a very busy road with a high speed limit!) and they had 4 or 5 fuzzy little goslings with them. They were so cute! If I wouldn't have had someone plow into my car from behind, I would have sat and watched them for a while.
A long, long time ago, when I was in second grade, our class hatched baby chicks (the kind that would grow up to be chickens). At the end of the school year, whoever brought a note from home with permission to take a chick home, got to keep it. I remember it took some fast talking on my part to talk my parents into this one, but they agreed with the stipulation that we give it away when we went on vacation late that summer. My dad knew this chicken farmer, you see....
So I had a chick and we ended up going to a pet store to buy a second one for my brother. His had black plumage, mine the white. They were so cute. If you picked up one, you had to pick up the other and I remember them being sweet. I don't remember what I named my chick, but I know I did. They were a little messy and the dogs weren't too thrilled to be sharing their home with a pair of chickens, but overall it worked out well.
Then we went on vacation and my dad took the chickens to his farmer friend. I absolutely refused to eat chicken for at least 10 years after that for fear that it was my chick.
I'm guessing this trip down memory lane is more interesting to y'all than listening to me bitch about the weather. :-) I did wear my winter jacket yesterday, and I'll need to today too. Sigh.
I've been trying a new reminder service to help me keep track of things. It's been working out really well and I'm very happy with it. It's called Memo To Me. I've been using it to remind me about a website I have to check weekly (and kept forgetting) and I used it to remind me about my blog date for 2 B Read. I plan to start making more use of it since the test period worked out so well. (And no, this is not paid advertising. I just found a service that's really working well for me and wanted to pass it along.)
