Rainbows, Ibises and a Ferris Wheel

Rainbow bridges

“Mommy, I see a part of da rainbow out da window,” said Graham matter-of-factly.  Didn’t seem like rainbow weather, so I assumed it was one of those random three year old statements.  But I went to the window to see what he meant….

 Wow!  He was right that it was just a part of a rainbow, but that was the widest rainbow I’d ever seen!!

And then another even bigger rainbow developed!

Julia:  “Mommy, it looks like God could just walk down on it out of the sky.”

Graham:  “Mommy it looks like da wainbow bridge in Thor!” and went to get me the story we’ve read every night for a week, with the Sentinel robots coming over the rainbow bridge to try to take over Asgard…

Wild Kingdom at McDonald’s

A couple of nights ago I saw a photograph in a restaurant of Alfred Hitchcock at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.  And so it was today at McDonald’s (or “Old McDonald’s” as Graham calls it) at Darling Harbor, that I realized that he must have had an inspirational visit here, too!  We’re eating our lunch under the open-air canopy when some seagulls and ibises toddled in.  It seemed cute and one-with-nature and all, until they started circling us and snapping at our lunch.  Julia thought it was funny and threw them a crumb, which brought flocks in right for us.  They were unafraid of humans and went for us with a singular determination.  Graham started screaming and crying when one of the ibises tried to grab a fry right out of his hand with its long spiny black beak.  I have to say, my own heart was racing.  I Mommed up and chased them away, and then had to keep policing our table all through lunch so Graham wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown. 

Here are some of the crafty scavengers casing the joint, ever-ready
for the distracted tourist.  (The seasoned locals ate quickly,
hunkered down over their food.)

As lunch was ending and the area had cleared out of birds for the time being, I decided to chance it and go back in line to get us some dessert.  Julia wasn’t shy about shooing the birds away so I figured if any got near she would keep them away.  I kept my eye on the kids the whole time in line, but right after I glanced away to place the order there was a huge commotion.  About twenty birds had swooped in and were ripping apart various McDonald’s food products mid-air while my kids screamed in terror.  My brain struggled to process – double brownie bites and ice cream / save the kids’ lives?, double brownie bites and ice cream / save the kids’ lives?… I’m proud to say I did do the right thing - I flew back to the table, arms waving and cleared the carnivorous flock.  Turns out the mom at the next table had walked her son over to the play park, thereby signaling to all the birds in the metropolitan area that she was through with lunch and everything was up for grabs.  So they dove in and attacked! 

I found the same thing when I stepped away for one second to open the door to the play park for my own kids, those buggers are on their game, they must have a secret squawk code, or maybe they’re working video cams and tiny smart phones tucked in their feathers.  (It’s possible I may have seen one too many Pixar movies…)  Once my kids were safely inside the enclosed play park, I marched back to the counter and demanded my money back, so you KNOW I was entirely grossed out and freaked out, leaving behind double brownie bites with ice cream.

It wasn’t even over yet.  I couldn’t have gotten through lunch fast enough, so I let Julia go to play before she’d finished her meal.  I carefully wrapped everything up and sealed up her Happy Meal and tucked it into the stroller basket.  We left the McDonald’s play park for the outdoor playground about a hundred yards away.  After we’d been there about an hour I saw Julia hunched behind the stroller.  I didn’t think about what she was doing, I felt my main job was to make sure I could see the kids, and that they wouldn’t do anything that could inflict great bodily harm upon themselves or others, which I was doing quite successfully, I might add.

And then a flock of seagulls began descending upon Julia.  While up at McDonalds’s the seagulls had seemed almost cute compared to the sneaky, evil-eyed ibises, they were suddenly in attack mode and just as aggressive as the ibises had been.  Turns out Julia had gone to retrieve her cheeseburger and now had it in her hand, and those seagulls had sniffed it from miles away the way a bee detects pollen in a dense forest of underbrush.  I ran to her side and they didn’t even flutter off like birds are supposed to, they just kept leaping at her and pecking away.  Luckily she was pretty cool about the whole thing, but I was entirely creeped out and had to shoo them away like a mad woman.  I don’t think I’ll ever watch “Birds” quite the same way again, or maybe ever!

First not-nice Australian

So I thought I would end our day by treating the kids to the Ferris wheel in the Chinese Gardens, which we’ve passed a hundred times already while the kids gazed longingly. 

It was when I looked at the prices that I discovered why it was usually mostly empty, despite having covered gondola cars to weather all weather:  it was frickin’ $$$$$.  At least I had never been to a Ferris wheel that charged $12 for an adult and $10 per child!  Fortunately they had a “special” where if you showed your McDonald’s receipt you could get a whopping discount and only pay $10/adult and $9/child.  The kids were begging me for it.  Oh, okay, gotta do it one of these days… so I paid up.  I held up Julia’s empty Happy Meal box and asked if we could get the discount.  “Yeah sure,” the lady grumbled.  So I gave her $28.

And then, literally two seconds later, Graham said, “Mommy, I changed my mind, I don’t wanna do da fay-wiss wheel.”  Apparently he had just noticed how high up in the air it went.  Apparently he had not noticed the “no refunds” part on the sign.

I did my best to coax him into it, telling him how fun it would be, why didn’t he just give it a try?  But he continued to insist that he didn’t want to go, and if I knew my son, forcing him would not end well, and would result in $28 worth of terrified wailing.

I approached the grumpy lady.  There was no one even in line, because it was so frickin’ $$$$$.  “Um, M’am, excuse me, I’m terribly sorry, but my son just told me that he won’t go on the Ferris wheel, he’s too scared.”  She stuck her hand out of the little semi-circle in the glass to point up at the Xeroxed sign of prices.  “Sorry but it says right here,” she said, “No refunds.” 

“But we JUST paid, thirty seconds ago!”

“Sorry but there’s no refunds, your son shoulda thought before about whether he wanted to go.”

“Um, he’s three.”  I gestured to my son, who was sitting in the stroller kicking his feet in the air for no apparent reason and humming the Star Wars theme song.

She looked at me blankly.

Now a part of me felt a little sorry for the lady.  She had a bad job.  She sat in a booth where all day long probably excited families skipped up to the booth thinking they were going to have a fun Ferris wheel ride and how lucky they were there wasn’t even a line, and then the parents would screech to a halt, and say to their kids, “Wh wh whoa, what the?  Oh sorry kids, but this Ferris wheel is just too frickin’ $$$$$.”  And then they would lead their family away, many of them in tears.  So now that she actually had some money from someone, she was going to hang onto it for dear life.  But still, come on….

I worked on her some more and eventually she did give in, but not without adding the dig, “Ya know, first ya want the discount without even the proper receipt, now ya want yer money back….”  The nerve of these Americans, hmph!