Is it kosher to put a zoo animal on your life list?  I’m going to have to if I keep doing a post every other day like this.

I believe this was at the Wichita Zoo in Kansas.  They had an indoor aviary when I visited a like four or five years ago?  Lots of fancy characters in there, and the Luzon bleeding heart dove is not the fanciest.  But he was special, because he had gumption and temerity.  He had gotten into the “airlock” between the aviary proper and (maybe not so) sweet freedom.  One joker leaving the door open a moment too long, and he would have gotten out.

Fortunately this was a fairly spacious antechamber, so the bird man of wichita wasn’t a split second from the door at any given moment.  We all got in without incident.  It was just amusing because this is a pigeon-acting pigeon, strutting around on the ground like any you’d see anywhere in the world, but y’know.  Exotic.

Is Luzon the largest island of the Philippines?  I think so.  Fresh from that very catholic and conservative country to our own crappy bible belt, it’s a humble dove with a splash of red on the chest, like he received some biblical punishment or sacrament.  Mary wept a blood tear on his chest.

Speaking of bleeding hearts, at my condo there is a bleeding heart flower on the back porch that grows ridiculously well.  The soil there looked like a pile of cigarette ashes turning to clay when we got here.  Vile.  Everything hated it.  But this plant, every year dead back to a pile of broken yellow tubes, blows up to be much larger than a man, elegant pink flowers all over it, and looks pretty decent for a long time.  We tried to tame it this year with tomato cages, but who knows if we’ll succeed?  Life… finds a way.

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