Dad – Check the price tag first

The one thing my kid put on her list to Santa this year was a bird. When prodded for a bit more details, we quickly found out that this bird was not a stuffed one but rather a real one – as in real-live, real-stinky, real-messy and real-pooping.

My wife and I are complete suckers for this kid and while she behaves as wonderfully as she usually does, we are usually extremely happy plunking down money for whatever whim passes by. *cough* only child *cough*. As the dad who cleans fish tanks, takes care of THREE dogs (see ‘not jack’), cleaned up after two gerbils, fed and watered an endless stream of ____ (insert every insect, amphibian and critter) and took not one but TWO gerbils to the vet to be put down when they got cancer ($80) I wrote a very strongly worded letter to Santa explaining how much trouble he would be in if he showed up with a bird.

Christmas morning came and Santa performed a miracle. He made my daughter just as happy with a stuffed Webkinz bird as he would have with a real one.

Until tonight . . . .

So we go to our local petsmart to check out fish and of course you can’t check out the fish without passing all the pitiful rodents\cats\reptiles and (you guessed it) birds they have for adoption. The other animals went as expected but here is where I really got thrown. My daughter walks past what I am going to call ‘the main bird’ and it whistles at her to get her attention. This is the one they put on the end of the bird section who gets his own cage palace – friggin petsmart. My trouble begins..

We have taught the kid not to stick her fingers in the cages there so she puts her hand on the glass and this bird gently tries to nudge her finger as if she has a treat. We repeated that trick 4 times. Then I put my hand up with the same results. This bird wasn’t trying to bite us so we moved around to the side of the cage with bars and the bird followed. He gently used his beak to crawl around just like the bird we met on vacation

and made a variety of noises that I believe were “they are falling for this crap” in bird-speak.

I could see the longing on my child’s face and could see the years dancing by as she played with this bird. Somehow the years of my cleaning poop began to fade a bit.

My daughter put her hand back up to the glass side of the cage and this friggin bird leans its head over against the glass. Then, doing it’s best cat impersonation, starts rubbing the back of it’s head and body against my daughters hand through the glass.

“Daddy, look how much it likes me”.

For the entire time we played with this bird, the thought of owning one became more real. It was at this time that my wife came back from wherever the heck she had been and my kid relayed all these details to her. She even repeated all of the actions with the same result with Mom in attendance.

My wife, ever the logical one, looked at the price tag before uttering a word SIX HUNDRED and FIFTY DOLLARS!

I don’t remember much of the next couple of minutes but somehow, my wife and I managed to explain that the only bird I have ever liked was WAY out of our league. I snapped back to reality and the store lost it’s dream-like fuzz and took on it’s true form. As a money hungry corporation who deliberately put the nice birds out on the end of the aisle to whistle at little kids. (a bit dramatic?)

We moved a bit further in the bird aisle to look at ones more in our range. There was an impressive variety of colors and noises but the very first bird my kid points at doesn’t nuzzle the glass between us. It craps all over it and I am instantly reminded of why we will probably remain birdless.

- the Man, the Dad and the Husband