I Know Where Babies Come From!

I have now learned where babies come from. This answer came to me as I was gazing out the window of our long Marshrutka rides from Kyiv to Zhutomyr, Ukraine. In fairy tales and old stories, I learned about storks. It ws rumored they brought babies to families. I thought they were just mythological and did not really exist.

But, trip after trip to Zhutomyr I saw several very large gray nests on top of power and telephone poles not too far from the road. Often there were several in a row, one on every pole it seemed. There must have been 50 or more over a 40 mile stretch. At first I thought they were ornamental, man-made to look like large bird nests. They were huge, even bigger than an eagle's nest! I knew eagles would not build a nest in populated areas, so that was out. They were close to houses and barns. I could not imagine any bird willing to build a nest that close to human activity.

Then, one day I saw movement in one of the nests. Upon closer examination, I saw two large white and black birds, one standing on one leg and the other kind of dancing around. This got my attention, so I looked closer at the upcoming nests. Then I saw several young birds in a nest, with one of its parents. They seemed to be mostly beak with a wooly covering on thier bodies. I found out they were the young ones being raised by their parents. The parents looked like the "fictional" storks that I read in those old storybooks when I was a kid.

Then I saw in the fields hundreds of these birds looking for food. They were not as thick as seagulls on a Utah field, but there were hundreds foraging on short grassy fields. When I asked a native what kind of bird they were, he said the English word was "STORK". So they really did exist and they were not just in a fairy tale.

Well, if storks are real, then the rest of the tale must be true as well. Thus, I determined that babies come from Ukraine because that is where storks live, waiting their turn to pick up and deliver babies. Just don't ask me how they know where to deliver them. That is someone else's problem to find out!

Interesting notes from Ukraine