I’ve become obsessed with birds. It started last Saturday when I walked into the bird store. I was immediately immersed in bird-dom. My life hasn’t been the same since.
“You know what I mean?” I heard a woman say in the back.
“I know exactly what you mean,” I heard a man respond. “I’ll show you exactly how to do it.”
I sauntered around the store trying to be interested in everything else, but I really wanted to know what they were talking about. They were immersed in some sort of frame with hooks that hangs something for the birds. The woman was wowed. The man showed her again, and said to call if she had any more problems. She was excited to get home to her birds.
A gentleman walked past me with a big bag of birdseed named “Nature’s Choice.” He brought it straight to the check out counter and announced to the shopkeep that he had seen a “Fisher’s nest.” Evidently they are hard to see and this was big news. A conversation ensued with a bunch of rapid-fire bird-anecdotes. I caught that the state bird of New York is the Eastern Bluebird and in Vermont it is the Hermit Thrush. Lord knows what else I would have learned if I could have stayed there all day.
I totally trusted that that chatty bird dude knew what he was doing when it came to buying birdseed and grabbed my own bag of “Nature’s Choice.” The store cleared out of the other customers and I let the owners know how sorry I was to hear that they were closing. They said it was a combination of a bunch of things including a bad winter for birds that followed a bad apple summer plus, as their Facebook page said, they just couldn’t make the math work any longer. I never knew there was a correlation of apples to birds.
I walked into that bird shop on Saturday at one level of contemplation about a store closing its doors after twelve years. I walked out with an exceptional customer experience, a whole new hobby, and a mission to make sure these business owners know that what they did was not in vain. I am now obsessed with birds because of 20 minutes in a damn bird shop. Where are these bird conversations going to take place? I want to learn more from the bird people!
Every time I’ve turned around at the homestead this week, birds have been at the feeder. It’s almost as if these two were posing and saying. “Write some things down!” Ok, birds and bird store, this is for you.
For the birds!
xo – Joy
Joy Proft is the owner of JOY all things underthings in Manchester Center, Vermont. In her visit to The Vermont Bird Place, she also learned that the Fisher’s nest was referring the nest of a King Fisher bird, not a Fisher Cat.
