Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Friday, 31 August 2012

Birds and books ...


Not only did Noddy the budgie love sugar, he wasn’t averse tasting other things too. Like a ane dollar note of our much played monopoly game. Granddad caught wild birds too. His trap was an oblong cage that was divided into three. Each third had its own lid that. The lids were attached to a small platform that hung underneath.  The way the trap worked, was an already trapped bird would be in the centre cage to lure other birds down, tempting bird treats would attract birds to land on the platform. The weight of the bird on the platform would make it fall and close the lid thus trapping the bird. The hardest part was trapping the first bird. The trap really did work.
Talking of birds, I remember Mum trying to rescue a bird that had something tangled around its legs. The bird had got itself caught up in one of the tall poplar trees in our backyard. Did she reuse it, I wish I knew.
I’d read about magpies being attracted to bright sparking objects. Not that I had ever seen one, I am sure there were none around when I was a kid. By the time my children were the age I had been thee were relatively common place.
I was very fond of a series of books by Enid Blyton. The famous five books. The adventuring children had a parrot that accompanies them on their exploits. The parrot was white,  sulphur crested cockatoo called Kiki. The kids got up to all sorts of adventures, but always manage to get home safely.

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