Chapter 10

This is a magpie, obviously a baby. Are there magpies in America? I don't know; I've never seen one. I'm only aware of magpies in the UK. A baby is a baby, in any language and species, the first reaction (unless you have a heart of stone) is "oh, isn't he/she/it adorable". Funny, though, about baby birds... I've seen several bird babies with their parents - and they always, at one point in the growing - are HUGE. For instance, the grackles, and the starling, their babies are stunners! The parent is so tiny and the baby so demanding. As they grow older, the baby becomes smaller.

Does that mean we are full of ourselves, as children, i.e., it's ALL ABOUT ME, so we puff up, we fluff up, we yell for our suppers?

I think the child stays inside the adult, myself. The adult just learns how to tell the child - be quiet.

I went to a workshop on identifying footprints in the "wild" (the wild can be your backyard). I learned that this could become an obsession. Humans have an instinct for the hunt. However, with our evolving (or is it de-evolving?) away from the need of constantly foraging for our suppers, we have learned to hunt for other things. Some hunt at the Mall, others online. We thirst for information, stimuli, games, possessions.

The Magpie's like that. That bird tickles me with his/her need to collect shiny objects.

Footprints - what I learned is that in identifying, what animal, or bird has been "here" (where you're standing when you are looking for pints) that you should look at your total environment. Are there teeth marks in the branches? Is the grass chewed up? Are there bones, droppings? An owl leaves pellets, i.e., things he/she couldn’t digest, so he coughs it up. A crow is a walker - you can see that in his footprints. Birds who stay in the bushes and trees most of the time will hop when they touch the ground. You can also see that in their particular imprint.

What footprint do I leave? What will it say about me?