Flying high

The past few weeks, the kids have been flying high, excited and happy and eagerly racing home from school each day to visit… a new member of our family! It’s true, our family has grown… No! We didn’t have a baby…

…we acquired a bird.

He’s a society finch, active and curious and thankfully not very loud. He sleeps in his little nest, or on a branch with his head tucked under his wing. When he does that, his belly sticks out, white and puffy, and he looks like a little puff of snow with just a smidge of dirt on the back. The kids have named him Snowball, in honour of this phenomenon, which does seem to be rather a peculiar name for a bird that is otherwise brown.

To my great surprise, K has bonded with Snowball. He talks to him daily, has proven to be completely reliable about feeding him and changing his water, and often sits beside the cage for half an hour at a time just watching and thinking and occasionally carrying on a conversation as if Snowball’s chirps and trills aren’t a mystery to him at all. They’ve become friends, this bird and that boy. And K shows such a wealth of caring for such a tiny creature. It makes this mother’s heart glad to see it.