Riding a horse is...

"Scary!"

"...and terrifying!"

 That's how Istra described riding a horse to me on the phone, and then I heard Emeth in the background bellow the addendum. But judging by the pictures, they did okay, and were having fun!

Anne took them to the farm where her friend, Ivonka, is hanging (and helping out) out these days, near Lindsay. There were horses and chickens and goats, with wieners roasted on a camp fire. But most exciting of all was that two of the baby goats did not have names, so each kid got to name a kid. Istra named hers "Shiggy", and Emeth named his "Fillow". I have pretty much no idea how they came up with those names.

Maybe Fillow and Shiggy, maybe not.

Here are the rest of the pictures, as taken by Gramma (who also was along for the ride)...

Night visitors

We've been seeing a lot of these guys at night in the back lately. Ever since the kids crafted a bird feeder out of a milk carton, and a squirrel apparently tipped it over.

 

Though it looks like daylight, this picture was actually taken around midnight. The light is entirely from my big flash (through the glass sliding door, no less). As the night went on, I figured ways to reduce the flash glare and increase the photo quality. The racoons frequently stopped and stared for a while in my direction trying to figure out what was going on, but the flash didn't seem to phase them much. So way too many racoon-y pics are now just a click away!

Monkeys observing monkeys, kids and kids...

So, we headed to Elmvale. The weather graphs indicated rain wouldn't start until just after the Zoo closed. We trust the weather graphs.

First we stopped at the famous flea/farmer's market. We saw no fleas worth mentioning (unless they were hidden under the vast quantities of cheap cowboy hats and "Egyptian" bedding), and we frankly doubted the authenticity of the farmers. Bought some yellow beans anyhow. Mostly we admired the dinosaurs. Though we somewhat doubted their authenticity as well (they were still cool).

So, to the zoo! The Elmvale Zoo, though small, is quite nice. You feel fairly close with the creatures, despite the omnipresent wire grilling.

(A lot of the pictures I took are "close up", so aren't optimal in small/thumbnail format. Faces and paws, especially; and other details. The journey works best as a nice fullscreen slideshow...)

The heavens opened and the deluge commenced mere minutes after we secured ourselves back into the car. And we had left about 15 minutes before closing time. We outsmarted those tricksy weather graphs!

Early Spring Animals

Gramma had some passes to the Toronto Zoo, which a friend had given her quite a while ago. Finally, last weekend, we used them. As usual, we got going later than planned, and things were a bit confused... but in the end it worked out to be probably the best Zoo visit yet.

One of the crucial elements to the trips success was bringing the scooters (which Grammie got them for Christmas), for the kids to scoot around on. This made traveling between exhibits a lot less of a drag, and kept the kids from tiring out very quickly. The scooters were perfect; light-weight and easy for us to carry when needed.

The gorillas were one of the biggest hits. We spent a lot of time with them. The antics of the littlest gorilla (seen here) were highly entertaining. At one point this little guy came and hung out on the ledge of a glass observation area, immediately right in front of the kids, much to everyone's excitement. (There are some pics of this in the album.)

Istra became strangely fascinated with this weird device at one of the exhibits (an example of an old African research station, or something). I asked her if she knew what the thing was. She did not. So, I spent a while explaining the concept of a typewriter, and how they came before computer keyboards. She wants to try one someday.

Emeth really wanted to find peacock feathers. If you follow them long enough, surely they'll drop some eventually?

Lots of things to see.

Click the lion to see more of what we saw....