Scary Birds.

I don’t like birds. Actually, I hate most birds. They terrify me. I get heart palpitations and short of breath when they come near me. Especially flocks of birds or large birds. I am convinced they are out to get me and will take any and every opportunity to bite me. Yes, I am afraid of being bitten by birds. I realize that my fear is completely irrational...but I had a traumatizing experience with a goose as a child and have never recovered.

There’s only one bird I can think of that I actually like. I like penguins. After seeing March of the Penguins, I was hooked. How could you not fall in love with penguins after seeing the dad penguin crying when his little egg cracked? Much to my delight, there were not one, but two penguins that we were able to see (amongst the hundreds of otherwise scary birds).

Luckily I have Andy around to scare off these birds for me. He has already had to scare off a couple of suspicious-looking seagulls for me so that I could finish my lunch at Bondi Beach. He also took a picture of a terrifying bird with a beak that’s a good 6-inches long. Imagine that pecking at you arm. I know that their beaks are for picking bugs out of the grass and not for pecking at humans. But still, just imagine it nipping at you over and over. The thought alone is enough to make me shudder. Speaking of shuddering, that’s exactly what I did when I saw not one, but multiple emus. Talk about scary birds. They would probably have come up to my shoulder had I let them get near enough to measure...but there's no chance I would ever let that happen. I will run like a baby if I have to. I need a good 10-foot bird-free perimeter around me at all times.









Back to the birds. We visited Featherdale Wildlife Park, which is where I saw the emus (and other scary birds) along with a variety of other native animals including kangaroos, wombats, and koalas. We were given ice-cream cups filled with food to give to the roos and emus. Andy tried, but apparently one roo took the cone out of his hand and dropped it on the ground leading to frenzy amongst the animals (especially those mean emus). We got another cup and I dared to feed the roos. Surely, they wouldn’t bite me?









PS. About those roos... Much to my horror, I learnt that kangaroos can pause their pregnancy and have a gestation period for up to 6 years. 6 years! The normal gestation period is 100 days, so imagine how long 6 years must seem. Crazy.
kl.