Manchester, NH–

Governor Romney’s Ask Mitt Anything town hall event in Peterborough, NH today started out like most and I had no reason to think there would be anything besides the usual mix of stories and stump with a few jokes I’ve heard many times thrown in. But,  I was wrong. Soon after he started, Romney mentioned a familiar name:

“As I was coming here from Milford one of the national news spokesmen Carl Cameron. I don’t know if Carl is here, Carl may be here somewhere. Carl from Fox. You ever seen Carl on Fox News?”

Carl had chatted with Romney in Milford at an earlier stop.  After the audience applauded the former Granite stater, Romney poked fun at Carl. I couldn’t have said it better myself:

“Oh don’t applaud. It will only encourage him. But anyway he said to me he said that your story about the birds is what people are talking about after your events and I’ve only been talking about this for the last couple of days. So with his encouragement I thought I’d begin by telling you  about the birds and why they are  relevent to what I am doing today.”

By now you are probably asking what is the bird story and why are voters telling Carl that they want the governor to tell this story. Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I think it may have to do with some arm flapping. Yes, Romney actually spreads his wings (arms) and flaps like a bird.

Romney began telling this story only a few days ago, but it seems to have a following. The presidential hopeful says that when his boys were young they were playing and knocked a bird’s nest down. They brought it into the house and Ann Romney called the Audobon Society to see if they could put the nest back up. They couldn’t and Romney’s son, Matt started taking care of the five surviving birds. He fed the birds with dog food (an apparent worm replacement) and eventually the birds were ready to fly into the big bad bird world by themselves. But, how? Ann Romney called Audobon again and was told that the boys had to teach the birds to fend for themselves:

“Well you’ve got to teach the birds how to fly. Not easy to do and we said how do you go about doing that? Well you take the birds outside and sort of lift them up a bit and let them go and they will flutter their way to the ground. So we watched our son Matt and his brother Josh they would go out there with these birds and throw them in the air and then they woud run out ahead of them and flap their arms. “

This is the crucial part of the story telling when the New Hampshire frontrunner runs a few steps and starts wildly flapping his arms.

The birds eventually learned how to fly on their own and made new bird friends. Don’t worry they would still come visit Matt and the Romney family occasionally landing on Matt’s  head and catching visitors off-guard.

Romney uses this tale to push his stronger familes message, equating little birds with little kids:

“If you think a little bird will pattern themselves after a human you can imagine how children pattern themselves after other humans.”