I don’t remember watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood as a child. I mainly remember Sesame Street. I recently had the thought to start watching this show as an adult, as a supportive adjunct to my therapy sessions. I was surprised to see the first DVD I looked at on Amazon was priced at $16.67.
I ordered three Mister Rogers DVDs, and each DVD has about 30 episodes, but this particular one (Meets New Friends Collection) priced at $16.67 was the only one that had episodes with a 166 in it. Episode 1662 was titled “Love” on the DVD. It ended up being about an Aviary. Wikipedia describes an aviary as a large enclosure for confining birds.
Before watching this episode, I was associating 166 primarily with the relationship between humans and animals. After watching this episode, I started associating 166 with questioning how humans define love with regards to the relationship between humans and animals. I personally find it one of the most heartbreaking things in the world to witness an animal that is literally genetically designed to fly and spend most of its time in the air/sky, be then confined to a cage by a human being. And yet we confine birds to cages as pets on a regular basis and make entertainment exhibits like aviaries where we confine them to bigger spaces, but they are still confined and not free to fly anywhere else.
I’m clear within my heart, that’s NOT love. And I imagine for a bird that already experienced the freedom of unrestrained flight, that now being in a confined space is tragic.
The second episode in this series with 166 in it was Episode 1606 and it was entitled “The Short Necked Giraffe” on the DVD. It ended up being about a field trip to a Wild Animal Park (i.e. San Diego Zoo Safari Park). According to Wikipedia, the name "safari" is supposed to emphasize "the park's spacious enclosures of free-ranging animals" (as opposed to "the closer quarters of the zoo"). Watching the episode was a bit confusing at first, because the animals had so much space and you couldn’t really see any enclosures. Are they free or confined I thought? But then I thought if the animals weren’t ultimately enclosed, then the zoo park owners, wouldn’t have a consistent exhibit to entertain visitors each day.
I asked myself, well isn’t it more loving to give them more space to move around as if they were in their natural habitat? Yes, I do think it’s kinder to do that than enclosing them in a confined space…but in the episode, Mister Rogers and a park attendant drove out to feed the giraffes and I thought if these animals were in their natural habitat, they would be able to feed themselves and move to different areas and have more “family” and “friends” to visit/socialize with. Right now they are largely isolated and not connected with other members of their species. That’s got to be stressful for any being’s bodily system to be taken out of their natural habitat and disconnected from their support system (plant life and members of their species), and then be gawked at by humans all day. I think the loving thing to do would be to leave them alone, not confine them, and go visit them in their natural habitat if you want to see a giraffe.
Out of the 70+ Mister Rogers DVD episodes I’ve watched so far, there’s only been three other episodes heavily featuring animals (episode about a zoo, episode about puppies, and episode about scuba diving) so in my mind, it’s not a coincidence that the only two episodes on the DVDs that have 166 in the episode number, are about humans confining animals in different ways. This association between 166 and animal/human relationships also lines up with previous posts about 166 and animals.
Other Observations:
-Both episodes aired on the 13th
- The Aviary episode clip has 33 in it
- The Gematria Ordinal Number for “Mister Rogers” is 166 (see below)
