Blossoms: Lilies-of-the-valley! We were taking a walk and had stopped to visit with Cosmo, the black Lab down the street. Suddenly I caught a whiff of lily-of-the-valley, and then I spotted them growing along the driveway.

Reading: Gotham, until further notice. There are over 1200 pages in this hefty tome, and I'm averaging less than 15 pages a night. I'm enjoying it, though.

Zoo, Part Two

So other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Well, even if I hadn't almost lost Stephen, yesterday's trip would not have qualified as one of our favorite visits to the Philadelphia Zoo. The best thing I can say about it is that the weather was beautiful: sunny but not hot, with just the right amount of breeze.

We have a family membership to the zoo. We went there four times last year, but always on the weekend. We had never been to the zoo on a weekday in the spring, and we were taken aback by the throngs of schoolchildren. The back parking lot, which used to be for members only, was full of school buses. Waiting for the bus from Daniel's school, I counted at least 25 before losing count.

Daniel's entire kindergarten class of seven kids came along on the trip. The mothers of five of his classmates also attended, as did Tab and I with Stephen and Matthew. We all started out walking through the zoo together, but the four girls in the class and their mothers got further ahead of the rest of us. We ended up walking with Daniel's best friends, Danny and Patrick, and their mothers, Denise and Patty, throughout the morning. Traveling in the smaller group worked out much better; the larger group was too cumbersome.

The highlight of our trip, as far as I was concerned, was seeing one of the polar bears swimming around. Every time we've visited the zoo, the polar bears have been sleeping. Today, however, one of them was playing with a large plastic box, batting it around in the water. Once he nudged it up on to the rock, then pushed it back in and dove in after it. The crowd cheered. The bear moved rather clumsily on land, but was poetically graceful in the water.

My other favorite exhibit is the giant river otters. I have a thing for both sea otters and river otters. These two are so playful. They look like they are really enjoying themselves as they swim around and around, chasing each other.

We stopped at 11:30 at the Impala Cafe, eating our brownbag lunches at an outdoor table. Unfortunately, the girls' group bumped into us there and wanted to re-form the group as a whole, so after lunch we were stuck with them. Our next stop was the Rare Animal House where Stephen had his misadventure.

Once we recovered Stephen, we visited Daniel's favorite haunt, the Reptile House. I was a little surprised that a few of the mothers elected to skip the reptile house altogether, citing their fear of snakes. Snakes don't bother at me at all, which is a good thing, since Daniel is fascinated by them. I'm okay with spiders, too. But I must confess to a paralyzing fear of...moths!

Then the rest of the group decided they wanted to buy souvenirs. As we approached the gift shop, I could see that it was horribly crowded. Tab and I decided to wait for the rest of them on the grassy lawn nearby. The twins ran around and chased each other, and Daniel tried to climb a tree. Tab and I watched the peacocks strutting around. It must be their mating season: a couple of the males were in full courtship mode, squawking continuously and fanning their tails out into a glorious spread of color.

After twenty minutes, the whole group finally emerged from the gift shop. We suggested taking a group picture of Daniel's class and teacher, but some of the group wanted to use the bathroom. Unfortunately, we were near the main entrance and there was a line waiting to get in to the ladies' restroom. So we waited another twenty minutes until we were finally able to take the picture.

By this time there was less than half an hour left until the bus left. The rest of the group wanted to go to the petting zoo, but Daniel had been asking us to go to the lorikeet house. So we split off from the rest of them and went to see the lorikeets.

Rainbow lorikeets are beautiful birds, green with yellow, scarlet, and blue markings. Small groups are allowed into the lorikeet aviary at a time. Admission is free, but you can choose to purchase a small cup of nectar for a dollar. If you walk into the aviary with nectar, lorikeets will soon land on your outstretched arm and drink directly from the cup. (Picture of Tab with lorikeets from our visit last year.)

Last year when we visited the lorikeet house for the first time, Matthew and Stephen were intimidated by the birds flying so close to their heads, and Stephanie (who was with us) had to take them out of the aviary. Daniel had wanted to feed a lorikeet then, but he panicked when the birds landed on his arm, and he dropped the cup of nectar.

He wanted to try again this year, so Tab held Daniel's arm steady until he got used to the feeling of the birds walking around on him. He stood still as a statue until the birds had finished the cup of nectar. The twins were not as afraid this time either, until one lorikeet buzzed Matthew, at which point he decided he wanted out of the aviary.

By now it was 2 o'clock and time to meet Daniel's bus so that he could return with his class. Tab and I agreed that we didn't particularly enjoy this trip because of all the waiting we had to do for the rest of the group. The boys seemed to have a good time, though.

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