A moment in time.

Well if you want a bit of good entertainment all you need is a two year old child and a parrot. Yes, you heard me right ... two year old + parrot = FUN. Sas and I went to look at cars at the Toyota dealership next door tonight. We of course took the kids which then turned into a short walk around the neighborhood (because the evenings have been beautiful of late). This in turn became a visit to the mall which has the pet store that Shamus loves to visit.

We do our usual rounds: the minature turtles, then the lizards, and onto the snakes. A quick pass of the fish and scorpions. Next a nice visit with the puppies and finally the big turtles. Yes, it is a venerable microcosm of nature in its purest form.

Now this seemed like every other visit that we have made to this little animal kingdom until we passed the bird cages and we heard "Hello...". A little check around our immediate vacinity confirms that all patrons are in there proper animal viewing positions. Then ... "Hello" again. Wait ... where is that coming from? Is ... is it the parrot? So I tell Shamus to say hello to the bird. A two year old talking to a bird looks way more sane than a thirty-something chatting up a parrot. So Shamus says hello and the bird returns "Hello" Shamus giggles and replies "hello" which the bird once again says "hello". I wish I had the literary deftness to relay the entire "Shamus vs Bird" experience. Please take my word for it that it was pure magic. One of those rare spontaneous moments that only a child can show us. It was so infectious and entertaining to watch the back and forth banter between him and the bird. Each response from the parrot spawned another giggle which grew until it finally became belly laughs.

On the way out we returned to say another quick "hello" to Mr. Parrot. As a treat just as we were leaving Shamus said "bye Parrot" (as he always says buy to all the animals and also pretty much any object ... like buses and boxes, cars, etc...) and of course the parrot replied "BYE".