An Overabundance of Parakeets. Great.

In addition to the new penguin exhibit and the flamingos, the zoo has added a parakeet open fly exhibit this year. For those of you who know my history with parakeets, I was trying my best to avoid this attraction, but failed. So, you walk into this large greenhouse/barn building that used to house butterflies, and are surrounded by hundreds of parakeets. For a $1 you can buy a popsicle stick with bird seed on it. I'm cheap and didn't really want to encourage parakeet interaction, so I did not purchase said stick, but once we were inside, another mom gave me her's as they were leaving. And so began the hunt for hungry birds to land on the stick. Ben was obsessed! Nick somehow came about a feeder stick too, so they both had one. They were chasing birds all over. I showed them how to properly approach a bird and entice it onto the stick. Ben could hold a bird on the stick, but I don't think Nick was capable of holding up a stick with a bird on it. After 20 minutes, I finally forced them out of the bird house. Amazingly, we did not get pooped on, no birds escaped into the wild, and no one got bit. These must be nicer parakeets than any I've encountered before.