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Chasing Birds

Chasing Pigeons

Sneaking up on them doesn’t work either (satakieli)

We’ve all done it.  Who doesn’t like to chase birds?  When you’re walking through a park or a town square you see a group of likely looking birds and you can’t resist just steaming over there and trying to catch one.  You never succeed, but you still try.

Pigeons are the worst for this because they let you get so close and then just as you are about to grab them off they fly.  And they fly off as a flock spreading their dust and feathers everywhere.

By the way, I hate pigeons.  Please don’t feed them.  They are just rats with wings.  Although they are better than sea gulls.  If sea gulls all behaved like Johnathan Livingstone I wouldn’t have a problem with them.  But they don’t.  Instead they make a bloody awful noise and an even worse mess.  And one of them once stole my ice cream.

Anyway, I digress.

Mr. T has just found out that he can chase birds.  We were in Jardim Botanico here in Curitiba last Wednesday and he noticed a bird hopping around on the grass.  He started to follow the bird and it kept hopping away, always keeping about 3 metres between itself and the toddler stumbling after it giggling with his hands spread open.  Eventually the bird got bored and flew off, much to the surprise of the toddler.

We went back to the same park the following Sunday and, it being a gorgeous day, it was absolutely heaving.  This meant that there were lots of other kids slightly older than Mr. T running around and up to all kinds of mischief.  Mr. found a group of pigeons and started to walk up to them, arms wide open looking for a hug from the friendly little flying vermin.  All of a sudden two other boys, about 4 years old, came bowling down the hill shouting at the pigeons who promptly flew off to land about 10 metres away.  The boys change direction and ran full pelt at the pigeons and, not surprisingly, they flew off again.

Mr. T was gobsmacked.  He just stood there, apparently replaying in his mind what had just happened.  After a minute or so he reached a decision, looked around for the pigeons and toddled of towards them, but this time with much more intent and not really looking for a hug.  He is still too slow for the wily old pigeons who are used to such behaviour and could easily outmaneuver him, so he was getting a bit despondent at the lack of flying action until the two bigger boys came back and set them all off into the air again.

This went on for about 30 minutes.

Lots of good exercise for Mr. T, who went to bed very easily that night.  i think e is also going to be perfecting his technique of bird chasing in future visits to the parks around Curitiba.

I am not sure what the pigeons made of it, but frankly I don’t really care.

Pigeon Dance

Get the little bleeders! (John O Dyer)

Written by
Noah Cooper

I'm the head of the Cooper heard. My wife and I moved abroad when our first son who came along in May, 2011. I am a typical Brit abroad with a family to raise and am sharing the journey of the expat life abroad.

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Written by Noah Cooper