My Earliest Memory

One of my earliest memories was when my family went to my aunt's house, for my cousin's high school graduation.  I was around five years old at the time.  While we were visiting, my aunt decided to take my mom and me to visit her friend who owned an ostrich farm. Yes you read that right an OSTRICH FARM.  So the lady showed us all of the ostriches which were kept in this huge enclosure in the yard.  Compared to a five year old, ostriches are huge scary birds, but luckily there was baby ostriches which were a little bit closer to my height.  There was one baby ostrich which stayed near the fence where we were standing, and the lady was telling us how he was sick and would probably die.  I decided right there that I was going to adopt the ostrich and nurse it back to health.  Then together my ostrich and I would reenact the scene in The Lion King, where baby Simba rides the ostrich while all the animals are singing.  However, then the larger ostriches got spooked by something and decided to stampede and terrify me to death.  Imagine about 20 ostriches running past you with only a fence separating you.  On the plus side after I freaked out, my aunt gave me a small bag of Cheetos to calm me down, because I was scaring her. That was the end of my dreams of having my own pet ostrich, and I credit it to being the source of my completely ration fear of birds, because we all know Hitchcock was right.

This is an ostrich in case you missed 'Birds of Death Day' in second grade.