A Peruvian Sand Standoff

I need to contemplate warm places today. The beach! Yes the beach! Actually the photos were actually taken almost a year ago on our biennial trip to Peru. We spent a day lounging around at Nina’s beach house (HHBL’s sort of step sister in a weirdly convoluted way). Alberto was nearly taken out by a rogue wave and HHBL had his infamous encounter with the PEPPER OF DEATH!!!!

Good times.

Did I ever really tell you the whole story about the Pepper of Death?

Well not today. Where was I? Oh yes, the beach. The nice warm Peruvian beach.

I spent some time wandering the beach with my camera, no surprise there. And I had an encounter with a very angry bird.

Let me set the scene. I am walking on the beach, minding my own business and there in the distance I see a bird. She is minding her own business and sitting on her nest….in the middle of the beach.

We are fine in our own spheres of influence….and then she spots me.

She is up out of her nest in a flash and making her way towards me with her little beady birdy eye on me.

I assumed that she would stop a ways away and stare at me before going back to her nest.

I would be wrong.

She challenged me. And I don’t just mean hurling birdy invectives, in colorful Spanish mind you, at me. No, she went for my toes.

It was either her or me……

And I made the split second decision…..

That it was going to be her.

My feet were about to be burned to cinders on the blinding hot sand. And if it wasn’t the hot sand then it might have been the bird going after my poor and unprotected digits.

I fled.

I did sneak up behind her after she turned around just long enough to get a very unclear and ambiguous picture of the eggs that she had laid in her little sand nest.

I could hear her give a big birdy PFFFFFFFFT! to me as she settled back in her nest.

I am still getting over the trauma.