Peacocks

Historically my daughter has been overly cautious in the presence of animals and at times fearful. At a distance she's interested in them, but as soon as they are remotely close, all bets are off. Mind you the term "close" is loosley used and relative. This hasn't stopped us from exposing her to a variety of new animals at farms and zoos. We are just careful how we do it. The warm weather weekend weather brought a renewed enthusiasm for the outdoors to our house. Over the weekend, I asked Taylor if she wanted to go to a park with a farm and the response she gave was one of impatient excitement. Hmm. I thought this would be great. Maybe she's forgotten that she doesn't like animals. Maybe this would be the moment when she would enjoy farms. Maybe I was mistaken? Off we go to our local park complete with a small farm on it. As usual, she runs around the jungle gyms and the open fields....and as usual she's not totally thrilled with the animals. From a "safe" distance she laughs and names the animals: "that's a sheep, that's a neigh-neigh (horse), etc". I'm watching her father carry her around the little farm and observing the scowl on her face, thinking "there's always next year". I space out while feeding the baby, look up and see them standing really close to the bird pens. Oh no, there is a huge peacock in there that likes to squawk and scare kids. I expect at any moment for this to happen and see my kid disolve into tears and never again want to come to the farm. Nope, she's laughing. How can this be? I convince myself that it's because Daddy is holding her. Later, as we are getting ready to leave the park she asks me to carry her closer (but not really all that close) to the horses. "mommy, I don't like the neigh-neighs". Okay. Then we go look at the sheep. "mommy, I don't like the sheep". Okay. "I want to go see the birds". So we wander over to the bird pens. I take her over to the one housing the smallest birds and she starts crying "mommy I don't like those birds, I want those birds" she says as she's pointing at the peacocks. Sooo, we wander over to the peacocks and her face breaks into a huge smile. She's laughing, pointing at the peacocks "see, see". I'm slightly stunned. I'm glaring at the big male peacock and willing this creature to behave. "I like those birds mommy, see, see, the birds" she continues to say. I do see them baby. Okay, I'll bite. So Taylor, why do you like the peacocks? Her answer threw me and might actually be a key to her. "they like me" Wait you like the peacocks because they like you? "Yeah, they like me. I like the peacoks". Really?! Okay then. I'm not sure how she got the idea that the peacocks like her, but I'll take it.