My mother is from Wiesbaden. She is a very proud German woman who like other military wives, followed their husbands to the United States. She promised my Oma (grandmother) she would send her pictures of everything I did. This was no easy feat back then. The cool, high speed, portable, digital cameras did not exist in those days. My mom kept her promise. My first tooth came in and my mom stood there prying my mouth open with one hand and trying to take a picture with the other.
The inevitable first trip to the zoo was next on the list. Why do people think that wild captive animals will treat a kid any different than annoying adults? Someone needs to end that myth. Animals don’t go “awww look, a little human baby lets be nice to it.” It just doesn’t happen! My mom handed me several animal crackers (My favorite cookie still today) and I started eating them, she yelled and said, “don’t eat those, feed the nice birdies.” Right when she said that, a condor sized parakeet landed on my shoulder. I screamed in horror. My mom said, “oh what a nice bird don’t cry baby.” That’s fine its nice, but she didn’t see what I was yelling at. The bird only had one eye! There my mom is trying to get me to stand still while I am fighting with the bird over my beloved animal crackers……finally it flew away with half of a cookie in its mouth, straight into a wire, knocking itself unconscious. I ran over to the bird looked down and said, “BAD BIRDIE!” I took that cookie out of its beak and stuffed it into my mouth.
Superbuff-when you are trying to take pictures (especially capoeira pictures) make sure someone is on the lookout for feet and legs that don’t belong in the shot (see pix above), and someone else to be on the lookout for angry one eyed parakeets.
“BAD BIRDIE!”
***oh yeah drink water and workout*** 
