I hope Jerry and I are good grandparents. It surely didn’t start out that way. 
The first time her parents trusted us alone with our year-old granddaughter we took her to Birds of Prey. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Audubon Birds of Prey in Maitland, FL rescues injured birds and releases them back into the wild when possible.
Haley smiled at the white-faced, barn owl as we entered. That may have been her last smile. We pushed the stroller to the bald eagle cage. There poor, injured, no-longer-majestic eagles loped around an enclosure, some dragging a wing. Haley’s face began to screw into a tortured mask. We quickly turned the stroller toward the cage behind her. On every crooked limb sat an injured vulture. Their bald, blood-red heads popped from fluffy white feathers above their scruffy black bodies. Wings drooped on some, claws or feet were missing on others. The scene we had always looked on with pity we now saw with a toddler’s eyes. Before Haley lay a Tim Burton horror scene of deformed, hissing, grunting vultures. She screamed to the top of her lungs. We calmed her down and cut our trip short, feeling like failures as grandparents. We thought we would be better at it.
Haley is ten years old now and thankfully doesn’t remember our first little foray. Perhaps it had no lasting impact on her little psyche. When we are out in nature now my camera cannot rest in my lap. She shouts incessantly “Ahmaw, take a picture! An anhinga! A gator! An eagle! An osprey!” Is it just possible that we didn’t scar her permanently?
That’s terrible, I love birds but only flying free.
Actually when you said
“we took her to Birds of Prey. It sounded like a good idea at the time”
I thought it was going turn into a story of a young child attacked by a bird of prey. It was a relief to read that didn’t happen.
I once read of a Pelican of Prey that swallowed a woman’s Chihuahua at a beach somewhere in Western Australia. How horrible….
An anhinga is a bird of prey?
It was an honest mistake, but they are kind creepy birds. Even in tact.
An anhinga is a perching water bird. They feast on fish.
The birds of prey are really not creepy when you get to know them. I want to put up “Adopt a Road” signs for the vultures. They are such good little clean up crews. And the hawks are gorgeous. You would not like my new “Fluffy Vulture” t-shirt.
This made me laugh! My oldest granddaughter, Jazzmin, is also 10. We made her blueberry pancakes when she was little never giving a thought to the fact that since she’d yet to have a blueberry, they’d probably do odd things to her poop….