A Bird's Way Of Saying Thanks

My middle daughter bought a toy for her first child that makes noises, plays a set of short tunes or says a few encouraging words when it is touched, moved, or any of the buttons on it are pushed. It is designed to encourage a baby from a few months old to a year old to reach out and grab it and get a verbal reward in the form of a short jingle of music or a few positive words such as “good job” or “thanks.”
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She used it for her first two children and offered it last week to her older sister who now has a four month old.

The unit is pretty touchy, and it will start speaking or making noise, at times, without any intentional input. It cannot be turned off without removing the batteries, and that fact made my oldest daughter say ”no thanks” when I took it to her in New York the other day.

The unit was therefore stuffed back into the bag, and it provided my wife and I more than a few smiles as we travelled on our three hundred mile journey home. Without warning it would start emitting some musical sound or a few words when we hit a big bump or sometimes without any seeming cause.

Whenever the window was opened to pay a toll, the air rushing into the back of our Jeep set it off, and I received a few strange looks from toll takers at my choice of music or the mumbled words that came from the back of the car where no one was seated.

When we got home last night I set the bag on the floor of our laundry room, planning to return it to my other daughter within a few days.

This morning’s routine of starting the coffee, walking down to get the newspaper, finish making the coffee, then read the newspaper was 3/4ths complete when I realized that the bird feeder on the back deck had not been filled for four days.

I wanted nothing more than to sit down with that cup of java, so it took the guilt trip of imagining a starving bird to get me to go out to the laundry room, grab the container of bird seed and run outside without my jacket on and load up the feeder.

When I came back inside my feet were covered with snow so I stamped my shoes on the doormat, and as soon as I finished stamping the toy said but one word: “Thank You.”

You can imagine my first look, then my laughter and I walked back to grab my coffee. And then the “Thank You” reminded me there was also no water in the birdbath so I filled a pitcher and did that task while fully expecting another “thank you” when I came back in and stamped my feet.

Nothing happened until I got back into the kitchen, and then I heard in a rising crescendo “Ta Da Da Da.”

I figured it was the birds’ way of saying thanks
(True story)