A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush

It’s like those old toys, you know, the Jack-in-the-Box ones where you crank a lever to play a song and at a certain point a little clown guy comes bouncing out.

Only this new toy, Bird-in-the-Hand, is more of a game.  You see, it has more components than that old one.  In Bird-in-the-Hand, you collect Location Cards that represent all the places your Bird can go.  You have to collect all 20 Locations Cards before you can move on to the board game part, which is a lot like that other old game called Mouse Trap.  The goal is to be the first player to make it to the end of the board game and to activate the Rube Goldberg machine you've created along the way, which, if you do it right, should knock all the other players off the board.

Okay, so first you crank the lever on the side of the Hand.  As you crank it, the fingers will slowly uncurl.  You've got to be ready though, because at any time the fingers could fly open and throw something out of the Hand.  It’ll either be a Bird, a Fish, or a Worm.  You have to catch the object when it comes out—but only if it’s a Bird.  If you catch a Worm or a Fish, you lose a turn.

Once you've caught your Bird you move on to the next part, which is collecting the Location Cards.  This part is like that card game called Go Fish, except there are more rules.  You can only ask about a Location that you have 3 of, and once you get the 4^th you can exchange it for 4 new Location Cards.  There’s also a trading element, where you can trade an extra Bird for some different Location Cards.  My personal favorite thing to yell during this phase is, “a Bird-in-the-Hand is worth two In The Bush!”  I love it because it’s not an official rule, but it’s one that my dad always says, which is weird because he’s never played Bird-in-the-Hand before.  Anyways, that unofficial rule has helped me win quite a few games, so I guess my dad is some sort of Bird-in-the-Hand prodigy or something.