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Showing posts from September, 2019

Stories from the Amazon - Twitter Pitter

There is a type of bird in Brazil that is very pretty, and sings beautifully. They are called Palm Tanagers . One day my brother, who was probably 9 or so, was playing with his friends at one of the mission base houses. There was a palm tanager nest in the rafters of their porch. One little baby bird got scared and fell out of the nest. For some reason they didn't, or maybe couldn't, put it back in the nest and my brother John brought the baby home to me, since everyone at that time knew me as the animal person who would take in anything and care for it. We weren't quite sure what a baby palm tanager would eat but we figured that fruit was probably a good option so I began to feed the baby chunks of papaya and banana and other fruits.He loved the fruit. He would sit there doing a happy dance with his mouth open as I shoved small chunks of fruit down his throat. We named him Twitter Pitter.  Twitter Pitter grew his feathers and bonded greatly to me. He could be anywhere in

Stories from the Amazon - Took the Toucan

When this story happened, I was a teenager and well known on the mission base as being the crazy animal lover kid. Actually, when we left the mission base and moved into the city, our old house became known as the Farm House, which really tickled my funny bone. My parents and almost all the other families on the mission base were full time missionaries. However, occasionally, other people would come on short term mission trips. Some would stay a year, some only a few weeks. We kids, always looked forward each summer to seeing if any new people would arrive and what they would be like. Some of them we really liked, like the short termer who would always fix my toy horse's broken legs, or the other one who would cook up some tasty homemade tortillas for the gang of kids. One summer, an older lady arrived and she went to one of the Indian villages to spend a few weeks. We kids never really got to meet her because she didn't spend much time on the base. When she arrived back to t