Deron has always loved birds. During our married life we have had many a creature in our house. The first bird we ever got, I received one year for Valentines day, 2 "love birds," AKA parakeets with the will to out chirp anything that was making noise at that given moment, whether it was the TV or the kids, they had to make more noise than that. They were messy and spit seeds all over. We ended up giving them away and I felt bad, but I just couldn't fall in "love" with them. Then we got a cockatail. His name was Pete. He was fun at first because he was quiet and the kids could carry him around on their shoulder and in the wagon and he was great fun. But then he started to SQUAK!! He put the parakeets to shame. He skreetched and squaked and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. So I locked him in a dark room and fed and watered him daily...there he kept quiet and the kids could still get him out and play with him when they wanted to, but then one day when we went to feed him, he was dead! Later I found out that they need light to live. (Opps!!) The kids said that I had killed him by locking him in "the dungeon." Poor Pete! Then Deron decided to get pigeons. (They weren't in the house.) The kids liked to help him feed them and watch the baby birds hatch and grow. On pet day at school, they each took one and showed them to their classmates and proudly told how their dad raced them and how they got to help feed and water and take care of them. Some of the birds had names and looked different than the others (I couldn't ever tell them apart). So the kids sort of claimed one as theirs and took ownership in it. Then one day Deron decided that he was tired of racing pigeons and moved on to another hobby that he would enjoy. The years went by, the hobbies passed and now we have come full circle and he has got back into pigeon racing. This time Cameron is doing it with him. They both love it. Their first big race is in 1 week and they can't wait. When we went to Mirror Lake this past weekend we took the birds and released them from there, since this is the place the first race will begin. The birds took off like they new what they were doing....and they made it home in excellent time. So their is hope that the birds will do the same in the upcoming race. Deron and Cameron have built lofts for the birds, trained and raised the babies and have had fun just spending time together doing something that they both are passionate about. They are close and Cameron thinks the world of his dad. As some wise person once said, "To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world!" And that holds true in this case!