First job of our stint as … well … grandparents
was to make a donut run with Caleb. He
was actually the first one up, which in itself is an accomplishment for
him. He got dressed for the trek, but he
insisted that he bring along what I thought was a change of clothes. He helped navigate to Shipleys and carry the array
of donut holes and blue ninjas and pink sprinkles and plain glazed back to the
car. But when we got back to the house, he
requested that I block the door so he could change in the car. Ah, of course. The change of clothes. But much to my surprise, it wasn’t a change
of clothes at all. It was his pajamas. Interesting.
I guess he felt cheated out of some valuable pajama time.
Christi had had another bad headache/nausea
attack in the middle of the night. So we
took the boys to the zoo so she could rest.
Josh had a couple of meetings, so that freed him up to do his pastor
thing as well. And the zoo excursion was
certainly a noteworthy one, if you just pay attention along the way. Oh, we’ve been to the zoo before. We’ve even been to this zoo before. But you never know what awaits when you go
with three youngsters.
The first encounter was with the bald
eagle. He sat regally on a tree limb
guarding the entrance to his aerie (Great
word, isn’t it? Means sanctuary,
stronghold, hideaway, refuge. Basically …
nest. I learned it from doing crossword
puzzles), and totally ignoring the interlopers outside the cage. That is until Caleb let out a shriek. The eagle immediately turned his head in
Caleb’s direction. And Caleb managed to
hold quite the conversation in eagle tongue.
What was said remains a mystery, but the bird knows.
The Galapagos tortoise walked right
toward us. Luke thought that approach was
just for him, and he squealed a welcome in tortoise-ese. I’m pretty sure the creature understood. (You
know, of course, that before children learn to talk they know all the secrets
of the universe. They have to give that
up, because learning to talk means connecting with the parental units in the
only thing worth giving up the knowledge of the stars for … love. Sound sappy?
Sound unbiblical? Of course it
is. I saw it in that movie where babies
can talk).
We swam with the otters. Sort of.
The zoo has a plexiglass slide that travels through the water like a
tunnel in the otter enclosure. As you
slide down the otters play with you.
They enjoy the swim and you don’t have to get wet. Great exhibit. Lots of fun.
(Oh, Zak and Caleb and Luke liked
it, too … I think).
As Luke and I stood mesmerized by the
majestic giraffe feeding from the high tree in his enclosure, a clamor was
heard from the pen next door. Tow rhinos
were squaring off in a confrontation. We
could only assume it was two males doing battle over the right to lie down next
to the female. Two of them were standing
face to face (or rather horn to horn),
scraping the dirt like a toro in a bullring.
One had a huge front horn. The
other was apparently the younger. The
crowd was silently cheering them on, hoping for a battle royale in the rhino
pit. Alas, we were all
disappointed. The one with the shorter
horn suddenly plopped to the ground in a heap and gave up the battle as if it
were just not worth the effort. The
silence of the crowd became an audible groan of disappointment as they all
wandered off in search of the next bit excitement
For us that came at the reptile
room. One of the boa constrictors had
noticed Luke and was actually jumping up at him (against the glass, of course).
Luke thought it was hilarious. Zak
noticed what was going on, and entered “Oldest brother to the rescue”
mode. He sat down next to Luke and began
a process of mesmerizing the snake by waving his hand, then swaying his hips in
a somewhat awkward rendition of a hula dance.
The snake followed it back and forth and up and up, until it either
reached the height of it ability to rise, or saw Luke and lunged again. (I
think maybe the little guy looked like lunch).
Over in the bird house, we were
stalked by a grounded seagull the first time through. He walked just ahead of us all the way, and
almost made his way through the door before the folks in front of us noticed they
were being followed and slammed it shut.
That forced him to turn back toward us.
I’m not sure who was more frightened – the bird or the boys. He made his way past us to the relative
safety of his bird house, and we made our way out of there. Our second time through there was a
duck. Well, maybe it was some kind of
exotic duck, but a duck is a duck, nonetheless.
It was precariously perched on the railing, and as I pulled all three
boys in the wagon past his domain, the duck, as ducks are prone to do, let out a
quack. The noise itself, as well as the
close proximity of its source, proved somewhat … startling to the boys. Zak and Caleb made their way out of that
wagon faster than an ostrich in full run.
Luke knew something was up, but he couldn’t quite figure out his
brothers’ rapid exodus. We managed to
escape the quacking menace and make our way out of the bird house, Zak and
Caleb breathing a collective sigh of relief.
Of course we had to stop at the zoo’s
play area for a few minutes, and then the boys crawled into one of those photo booths
for pictures. Luke was pretty much done
with the whole experience, and was barely keeping his eyes open. We swung by Chick-fil-a for lunch, and the
afternoon was filled with a movie about Paddington Bear. Fit the zoo theme quite nicely.
Last night we made our way over to
the neighborhood “Splash Park.” It’s one
of those places where water randomly squirts from structures or even from the
ground. It was a bit crowded, and Luke
was very tentative to get into it, but Zak and Caleb joined right in with the
wildness and ran from jet to jet like a bunch of monkees. (Just
can’t get away from that whole zoo thing, can we?).
Genesis
7:8-9 says, “Pairs of clean
and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male
and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.”
Father, thank you for Christi’s
progress. Be her healer. Be her pain reliever. Amen.
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