Lucky the Mourning Dove

This is Lucky Bird! My mother-in-law rescued it from their backyard in Yuma, AZ. So, what to do when they came home for the summer? Bring it with her of course! She has been hand feeding it and all the way up to the Pacific Northwest it sat in her lap or on her shoulder or in it's little box. The bird is really cute but we like to give her a hard time about being the CRAZY BIRD LADY! Here is Jacob holding Lucky. Every time Grandma would walk away and the boys would go over by him, he would start cheeping and ruffling his feathers. By the end of the night he was a bit more relaxed around the boys.

Here is one of Lucky sitting on Josh's hand.

Josh thinks he has died and gone to heaven. He has been wanting a bird and now we can live vicariously through Grandma (aka CRAZY BIRD LADY). He was trying to convince me to buy it from Grandma but the poor little bird follows her around and thinks she is the mother. I couldn't bear to take it away from her - and, for the record, she won't give it up. Now the only problem is what to do with Lucky when we go camping in a couple of weeks.....she didn't think of that when her soft little heart got her into this predicament.

This whole situation kinda reminds me of a story Ken's parents tell about Ken when he was younger. He was on his way home from school and found a poor chicken in an alley in town. The chicken didn't have any feathers and had been played with/chewed on by the neighborhood dogs. Ken (and his soft heart - wonder where Josh gets his compassion for animals?) rescued the chicken and brought it home. His dad said he could keep it if it lived (and all of us parents know.....that is not a smart thing to say because the love and care of a child can bring anything from the brink of death back to a rip-roaring life!).

Well, guess what?! She lived and Ken named her Henrietta. Well, Henreitta was quite the part of the family. She would ride on the back seat of the station wagon while they traveled to see the grandparents. WHAT A SIGHT THAT WOULD BE, huh?! She even made friends with the family German Shepherd.

Soooooo, all that to say.......no wonder we are where we are!

Oh, and I just happened to find the book "Are You My Mother?" at a garage sale this weekend and thought it was appropriate for the situation. My mother-in-law got a good chuckle out of that one!