Bayou Wildlife Zoo

The kids are moving on up in jiu-jitsu.  Last weekend, Caroline earned her first jiu-jitsu stripe.  Then a few days later, Henry earned his second stripe.  Caroline refused to smile for her picture and remained fairly stoic.  Not Henry.  Henry was proud.  Caroline is not always aggressive when she spars in her class.  She likes to know exactly what she's supposed to do before she does it, so sometimes she'll just wait around until the coach gets to her to help her.  We've tried to tell her to just try the move.  Even if you get it wrong, just try.   After one class this week, the coach came over and told her to pretend that all her opponents were Henry because she fights Henry.  They are only together in the lunch classes, though, which is why Caroline prefers those.     

Josiah has been into sculpting clay.  He has sculpted out a few of the comic characters he's created, the Whopperios (Whopper-eye-o's).  He started out with four regular characters, but when we did Great Artists at CC, he added Rockwell-io, Lichtenstein-io, Picassio-io, and Wyeth-io.  They have all made it into his comic stories.  After sculpting the bodies, he broke up toothpicks to paint their pens, pencils, paintbrushes, and other supplies.  He has really enjoyed the clay a lot.  Well, he enjoys the creating.  We're struggling with the 'where do we put all of these.'  The last batch he made sat on our kitchen countertop for a few weeks.  I put them high on top of a shelf to see when he'd notice their absence.  It's been a few weeks and he's yet to ask about them.  So we'll see how long this latest creation sits on the countertop.  

He has also gotten into JFK recently.  We read about him in our history book which lead us to watching videos about him, his death, and legacy.  Josiah read a book about him that he got from the library.  Saturday, he drew his portrait on our driveway.  It doesn't come out very well in the picture, but if you could see it in real life, he blends the colors with his hands so you can see the shadows and lighter sides of the face.  He has chalk skills.  

The kids also had a really good Saturday morning.  Our library has finally opened up again.  We can browse the shelves.  We haven't been able to browse the shelves for a full year.  The kids were so happy to have that freedom back.  We left with 50+ books all because we could.  It was great, though.  We got home and all the kids were silently reading in the living room.  Heaven.

And then there was the big thing we did this week.  Friday morning we drove out to Bayou Wildlife Zoo.  We had to leave our house at 7:15 a.m. to get there on time as it was over an hour away.  The kids were really excited to go.  I was not looking forward to it at all.  This was the type of place where the animals stick their heads in your car and eat from your hands.  I had seen enough America's Funniest Home Video clips to know that I did not want some animal to reach his head in to eat food off my lap/out of my hands.  I always vowed to never, ever, ever go to a place like that.  Not my thing.  But, since EVERYTHING got cancelled this past year due to COVID, I felt like we should take any field trip we could get.  Even horrible ones.  (I did not tell the kids that I was not looking forward to it.  I didn't want to quash their excitement.)

We went with our CC group and there were 30+ of us.  They stuck us in two open-air trams pulled by Jeeps.  Every single person was given a bucket of feed.  It seemed like a whole lot of food to me.  Our tour guide spoke to us the whole 40 minute ride, however I don't think we heard anything he said except, "Hands and heads inside" when we went through narrow passages.  He took off, showing us a few alligators (fenced in) and then some endangered animals (fenced in).  All was going well.  At this point, Caroline even complained that she was in a middle seat and couldn't see as well as those on the ends.  I didn't say anything to her because I knew what was about to happen.  We turned the first corner and right away we had two llamas walking swiftly towards us.  Caroline freaked out.  And I mean FREAKED OUT.  The animals hadn't even reached us yet before she was standing up, half-crying, half-scared, high-pitched saying that she wanted OFF the tram and wanted NO animal to touch her nor get within touching distance of her.  And then the first llama reached us.  There were many screams from our tram when that first animal arrived.  Excitement.  Anxiousness.  Fear.  Curiosity.  All the emotions.  Lots of screams.  It reached Henry and his friend first, who had their buckets at the ready.  The llama ate from them and then worked it's way down the tram to graze a little from all the buckets.  The second llama came and did the same.  Caroline remained firmly behind my body.  Then, who should come next but massive bulls and water buffalo.  They came on both sides of the tram so Caroline felt very unprotected. There was one named Ferdinand that was beautiful.  He had beautiful blue eyes and his hair was so smooth and brown and clean looking.  I still had no desire to touch or feed him, but I did appreciate him from behind the camera.  The boys had a grand time feeding every animal they could.  They loved it.  

Confidence.

About 2 minutes later.

Ferdinand

Caroline stayed firmly behind my back the whole time, but had calmed down enough to look at the animals safely behind my shield.  She enjoyed the turtles in their pond.  The deer that were too skittish to come up to the tram, so she looked at those.  The ostriches were really funny to watch.  But then we reached the camels.  She freaked out all over again because 'camels spit.'  They had two camels, Olaf and Igor.  Olaf ate from our tram and then allowed us to move on while he walked back to the second tram behind us.  But Olaf stayed with that second tram for a really long distance.  We kept looking back as we went on to different animals and Olaf just walked alongside that second tram enjoying the food.  From our perspective it looked really funny to watch him follow along.  Yet later we learned it was not quite so cool from their perspective.  Josiah's tutor was in that tram and she said the camel kept coming over the top of her head from behind and it was not pleasant.  

One of the last animals we saw were the zebras.  We were warned that they were aggressive and to watch our buckets.  They were bucket thieves.  Henry did his best, but one zebra did this up and down motion and cracked his bucket in two places (to the point that the bucket would never be used again).  Another in our group had their bucket knocked out of their hands and we drove away as all the zebras ate the food that had fallen on the ground.  

One of everyone's favorite parts were the two dips in the trail.  To be able to get up the other side, the driver had to go fast down the hill to gain enough speed to get back up.  The first dip was very fun, but on the milder side.  The second dip was like a roller coaster.  This was the time we all listened to the driver's instructions.  He made sure all hands, heads, and buckets were in the tram.  He stopped it slightly over the top of the hill, facing downward.  Then he counted down and floored it.  It really felt like a roller coaster.  All three kids loved it.  We actually had to do this dip a second time on the way back and that time Caroline lifted her arms in the air.  

Back at the barn, we exited the trams and saw two giraffes and several prairie dogs.  We walked to a second barn and saw pigs and goats and porcupines.  Caroline had zero problems getting into a pen with 10 goats.  She pet them and laughed and thought it was great.  

As we were walking back at the end of our time there, another adult asked Caroline how she liked it.  She just stared at them and remained tight-lipped.  They asked her if she would want to go back and she said, "No!"  She did not like it.  The boys, however, as soon as we exited the tram asked to come back again.  Sure.  With your father.