The Birds



Attribution, No Derivatives, Non-Commercial  by Cyron

Here's a little insight for all of you that are not very familiar with the inner working of the preschool mind:  It only takes a few birds to throw the whole day into an uproar.  Well, perhaps "uproar" is a little extreme, but it certainly can get them all riled up for a good long time.
Here's how it all went down today:  The little people and I were walking to lunch, along with the other two teachers that are in the class with us.  We rounded the corner by the playground, ready for the homestretch to the cafeteria.  I was bringing up the back of the line, and was quite happy that we were avoiding most of the more abhorrent line behaviors:  no running, excessive shoe loss, or banging of metal lunch boxes against any and all metal objects. 

Then I saw them.  Two overly large seagulls, perched on top of the library.  As we came closer, they cocked their heads sideways in their creepy seagull way, checking out the Little People carefully.  I'm not sure if they were hoping for a taste of the lunches, or were excited to create a Little People uproar.  Perhaps they had just been communicating in their secret bird language,  "Hey, Joe.  Want to see me scatter some preschoolers?"

For whatever reason, they lifted off and started flying down right at the kids.  Kind of like the picture above - not exactly dive bombing them, just way down low, almost right at them. 

The result was almost total chaos.  Running.  Ducking.  Screaming.  Fortunately, they scattered the direction they were supposed to be going anyway, but continued with the screaming and ensuing hysterical chatter as the birds made several more runs right over their heads.  It was like a seagull control tower flyby, with the kids being the Control Towers.  Or the Out-Of-Control Towers, as it were.

We did finally get them to the cafeteria after the incident without too much herding, wiping of tears, or concerns about future ornithophobia from all the bird trauma.  But they were pretty riled up for the rest of the day.

Bad birds.  Bad.