Spike learns to fly
Lochmarin
Wed 11 May 2016 09:04
| Spike has been a bit low. He’s been watching so many wonderful multicoloured Australian birds fly by and he has come to realise that he’s not the same as them, he’s a little, what shall we call it? Special. The fact is, Spike can’t fly. He's got beautiful plumage, but underneath that, instead of muscle and sinew he has beans and pillow filling. He’s just not cut out for the flying thing, but Spike, being Spike, was not going to be daunted by his lack of muscles or the small size of his wings. Fortunately, we had some boat guests who were more than happy to help him learn to fly. This is their story of how he got on, as told to Platy the Platypus. The boat guests were Bella and Baby ‘Oof ‘Oof. They were excited to help Spike to fly.  The first idea was to put wire in his wings so he could glide.  Spike stood up on the top step of the companionway, he looked down.  He felt delighted that he would be able to fly at last, he took a big jump and…. flew! For three seconds then, crash, he sunk like a rock in the sea. He felt so disappointed, he was bruised and sad. As the day went on his wings felt stiff and sore standing up high, he had to go sideways like a crab through small spaces and the wires were spiking him. We took the wires out. Back to the drawing board. Spike thought that he wasn’t getting enough oomph. The next plan was that Spike would sit on the winch whilst Phil spun it around so fast that he would be raised up in the air and he’d be able to fly at last!  Unfortunately, he didn’t fly, he just got really dizzy! Poor Spike, would he ever be able to fly? Spike wanted to fly like the Brahminy kites he’d seen, high high in the sky, soaring and soaring… To get high high in the sky he decided to try bungy jumping but instead of jumping down he was going to be bungied up! Phil and Isabella designed The Magical Bungy Flyer. This involved bungee rope, fine string and a halyard. Phil held the thin string whilst Isabella wound the winch to tighten the halyard.   All set… The elastic bungee stretched … and stretched …and stretched until finally Phil let go of the string and - peeeyoing! Spike rocketed up into the sky! Unfortunately, the soaring thing didn’t really happen. Instead he boinged and boinged and boinged until he finally came to a stop. For a very short time, Spike had flown, but it was rather sore just before hand: when he was stretched it really hurt and the rocketing was too fast for flying like a bird. Spike thought he was going to fly into space! You can see his take off here: Spike realised will never be able to fly, but decided he doesn’t want to fly. He can’t fly because he’s a toy bird. It’s not so bad being a toy bird, he gets to be “flown” by boat guests, they help him sing songs, they cuddle him, they play silly games with him and even sleep in bunks with him. Other birds who can really fly don’t get to do those things. And as for flying to other places, he doesn’t need to do that because but he travels by boat.  Maybe if I jump off here I’ll get to fly! |