Genna The Bird Whisperer

As a parent I am always watching my kids, looking for new emerging skills and abilities. Imagine my surprise as I began to understand Genna's nascent talent as a Bird Whisperer.

It all began at the Zoo. You can see in this photo that she was quite taken by the chicks on display in the nursery at the Family Farm. Though their incubator labeled them as 'domestic chickens', I believe they should have been labeled 'Genna's minions'. She stood there for quite some time, communing with them.

What was said between them I will never know. It is one of those mysteries that may never be solved.

Genna's communication with the Canadian geese (hi, Chelsa) at the UCD arboretum was much more straight forward, however. As we fed the birds (tuppence a bag) some bread, Genna would steal away and talk to these large (dangerous?) water fowl.

I walked over to her to see what she was saying. I could just barely hear her saying, "Go in the water, goose. Go in the water." And sure enough, there they were, lining up to go into the water. I could dismiss their compliance as being motivated more by there desire to escape a too-close human being, but I believe they could understand her, Dr. Doolittle-style.

This second photo shows that she followed this same poor gaggle of geese for quite some time. It's no surprise that they are all walking away from her. Her bird-whispering soon devolved into bird-chasing-while-screaming, which is a much more readily understood behavior.