Close encounters of the bird kind...

I am adding this to my blog primarily for my own viewing pleasure.

The San Diego Zoo has this spectacular caged aviary that is about 100 feet tall and God only knows how wide. Inside the massive cage is this lush, jungle-like setting complete with numerous water falls, rock caves, and deep green foliage in which hundreds of exotic birds are kept to "freely roam". We all loved it, especially Rob. As soon as we entered the steel sanctuary, Rob's inner Jeff Corwin emerged. He began franticly snapping pictures with our cheesy camera as if he was on a special assignment for National Geographic. Olive and I were impressed by our surroundings, but not as much as we were by our freshly popped bag of oil soaked popcorn. So, as we patiently perched ourselves on a near by bench, Rob was hard at work on his assignment studying every bird fact on display to ensure a proper presentation to our friends and family once out of the wild. After about 15 minutes of this, there was this particularly large yet timid bird that wondered next to Olive and I in hopes to share the scraps of popcorn that had managed to escape our two person feeding frenzy. Rob witnessed this and took the following picture:

Beautiful.

Once the perfect image was captured, he turned to me and asked if I would take a picture of he and this interesting bird. I obliged and we began the photo shoot. Rob walked over to the "friendly" bird and stood about a foot away from it, quickly tasseled his hair, and gave me the go ahead to begin.
"Make sure you get a good one", he exclaimed. Little did he know just how good it was going to be.
Unaware of how unfriendly this "friendly" bird was, while Rob posed next to the bird smiling his best smile, the bird extended its wings to full wingspan, ruffled all its feathers, and let out the most God-awful, piercing squawk as if it had challenged Rob to a dual til death. Rob too let out a squawk, (that of a baby pigeon), jumped about ten feet than began spinning around on the toes of his oversized fake clogs, while the bird went in for the kill on his hairy calves. Instead of trying to rescue my husband or better yet protect my helpless little gal lost in a popcorn haze unaware of the impending doom, I did the best I could to capture this once in a lifetime photo through my tears of laughter-filled eyes.

Eventually the bird flew away, unharmed, leaving Rob to deal with my scrutiny. Once Rob caught his breath, he looked at me pale faced, paused for a moment, then began laughing uncontrollably. I soon followed his cue to laugh. And all the while Olive sat there with her bag of popcorn unaware of what transpired.
I love my husband.
I love my daughter.
I love popcorn.