Wild times, home and away

Talk about a wild week! The youngest grandchild said our trip to The Wilds was her best day ever, and she wasn't just talking visiting all those wild animals. She loved feeding the parakeets and seeing the giraffes but she was also very impressed by the bus ride. (We were very careful not to let the pigeon drive the bus.) Her older sister can tell you all about the cheetah breeding program and which cheetahs are being sent to Canada and why, while her brother loved the rhinos, which he pronounced winos. (A friend suggests picturing David Attenborough narrating a documentary in which he creeps up quietly on a group of slumbering winos).

But that's not all, folks! We took a side trip to see Big Muskie's Bucket, the last remaining piece of the massive dragline that denuded these hills of coal decades ago. At home the kids built a dam across the creek and donned swim gear and sandals for a creek walk, where we saw a watersnake and lots of water-striders and crawdads. Grampa picked up a beverage can that someone had tossed in the creek and found a crawdad living inside--and very reluctant to come out.

In quiet times the kids played with Legos, sat in Grampa's lap to search for the ever-wandering Waldo, or tried out every pair of binoculars to watch the birds outside the window. One red-bellied woodpecker would swoop down to the feeder to grab some seed and then fly up to a limb of a nearby maple tree to feed her young, a wild spectacle right at home.

In fact the whole visit was one wild spectacle after another, exhausting but worth every effort. Today the Legos are cleaned up and the massive pile of shoes near the door has disappeared and the spare rooms are empty, but in the quiet I can hear those little voices laugh and sing and chatter and the memory makes me very happy indeed.

Funny faces.

A little creekside engineering.

Big Muskie's bucket.

Brave girl at the playground and in the creek (below).

Are we having fun yet?

Snake! (Much smaller than it looks.)

Crawdad in a can.

It doesn't want to come out of there.