A+ for creative valentine gifting

My husband booked a “falcon experience” as a gift for Valentine’s Day. I had no idea what we were getting into. He just said, “it’s outdoors.” We showed up at the park in Highland Park at 10:00 and a friend of his, a painter met us there with her friend, another artist and recent RI transplant to LA. Then this guy Alex showed up with these two boxes that looked kind of like 90’s desktop computers. He had computer fans on them s0 I thought maybe we were going to have some sort of of “digital art” experience.

But then he opened up the box and pulled out FOX, an actual for real Falcon who was trained to eat mouse bits from the gloved hands of strangers. Fox is a working bird who does Falcon experiences, photo shoots and film shoots and also is available as a rodent abatement animal for businesses in the LA area. Seriously, Alex takes his birds to various businesses and lets them hunt rodents for several hours while he listens to podcasts. Every year he takes his birds to wine country where they protect the grape harvest from mice. Who knew working Falcons were still in demand.

We met two of his birds and got to have both of them land on our gloved wrist and eat mice bits. My husband is super inventive with gifts and I am 100% lame when it comes to gift giving. I made him a hand carved wooden heart and got him a Frank Lloyd Wright puzzle (because he’s into pandemic puzzles) as well as take out from Dune and home-made Creme Brûlée for dessert. D is really hard to shop for. He always buys things from that one shop in Stockholm that’s only open after midnight on Sundays. (Schitt’s Creek reference). Now I’ve got to figure out how to top this for his birthday.