A childhood belief about birds

I have seen others that said that said that they had been told that if you put salt on a birds tail you could catch it. Apparently this was a long tradition in my family and that both my father and his father (born in 1900) had done the same. I took my turn when I was about 4/5 and my brother, who is 8 years younger did the same when he was that age.

I stood with my parents and laughed hysterically and imagined what I must have looked like to have tried that. A few minutes later though my parents got the biggest shock of their lives. After about five minutes running and shaking salt my brother returned with a bird! As my parents had promised that he could keep the bird if he caught it they had to go buy a cage and food.

We had the bird for about a year and my mom got really tired of it and decided to let it go while my brother was at school. When he came home she told him that a man had come around asking if they had any birds for sale and offered her a dollar, which she promptly gave to him. As his allowance was 5 cents a week he was thrilled.

A few minutes later he came in from the backyard with a salt shaker in one hand and a different bird in the other! My mom had to tell him that they only needed one bird and that he could not keep this one. My brother is still fantastic with animals and could probably catch a 3rd if he tried.