Keep ‘em in the nest
Wednesday’s Vegan Kids: My family and I just finished watching the strangely sweet documentary Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. It’s about a flock of escapee parrots in San Francisco and the eccentric man who has befriended them. There’s a similar flock of roving parrots in the Florida metro area where we live and it was fun to hear about another community that has a similar once-caught-now-free flock. What I found most fascinating in the movie, however, was watching the baby-and-parent bird interactions. When the parent bird flies back to the baby sitting on a branch with food, the parents literally shove food down the baby’s throat, beak to beak. We hope human parents aren’t quite that aggressive about making their kids eat healthy food, but it is illustrative that most animal kids eat only what the parents eat. No special baby food here.
In one scene, a parrot parent continually pushes its baby back into its nest. Eccentric Bird Guy explained that he has observed this behavior many times, and that the baby bird only flies out of the nest when it’s strong enough to push past its parents’ blockade and fly away. I told my own little chicks that this is how it works in the people world, too. Kids have to build up their own physical, mental and moral muscle before we let them fly away and make decisions fully on their own. Thankfully, I’m still stronger because I’m not ready for any of them to leave the nest yet.
