Animal Attraction

This post actually has NOTHING to do with my eating local experiment but something very strange happened today that I thought I'd share.

So no sh*t, there I was... sitting by the lake in Lincoln Woods this afternoon when things got weird. After sitting on the rocks, not 1 foot from the water's edge, 5 Canada geese swam over to me. They were closely followed by 2 ducks. The parade of pan-handling birds obviously thought I would give them food. When they realized I didn't have anything, they literally turned their tail feathers in my face and swam away. About 15 minutes later, after the birds had moved to others along the shore, I looked down and there was a minnow in the water. This minnow was swimming as close to the waterline as possible and still stay submerged. I wasn't feeding him either. The minnow must have sent out some sort of bat signal because 2 more fish swam up to me. The water in the shallow area was pretty clear so I KNOW they saw me.

While observing all this I was thinking that in the most remote parts of the world where animals don't see humans, they don't know to fear them. However, Lincoln Woods is pretty popular with people so I figured these birds and fish are being fed and are a bit more domestic than your garden variety wildlife. Please Don't Feed the Bears. Put the "Wild" Back in Wildlife.