Fall Break

I had two of these today.

























That can only mean one thing.

My little brother is on fall break so I took him and Beatrice to the zoo. It was glorious. The weather was awesome: 69 degrees, blue skies and the animals were feeling all brave today. Every single exhibit had animals wide awake and up close to the fences/people. It was the best zoo trip to date.

And while Cole was amazed at how close they got to us, he was more interested in the ordinary sights of the day. You see, ten year old boys are very peculiar. My brother is at least. Take him to the African Savannah where giraffes are practically eating our heads and he points out the squirrel on the walking path. Show him a rare stork looking for fish in a pond, he thinks the wooden canoe is way cooler. Stand him mere feet from a huge cougar and he will comment about the ball it is playing with. Cole was not into the zoo for the same reasons I was.

10 year old boys also like to tell jokes about poop a lot. Animal poop, people poop, dirt that looks like poop, Cole could talk about poop all day. I cannot. So we talked about important things, like which animals poop in the water and which ones throw their poop. Then I realized that those are just more ways to talk about poop so we talked about how we hoped that the animals wouldn't drown themselves, electrocute themselves or fall to their deaths in those trenches by the fences on the edges of exhibits. Because really, if you're not talking poop, what else is there to talk about?

We were pretty sure this guy wanted to end it. He kept holding his head under water for what seemed like minutes at a time. 

Finally got my close-up with this guy. Hello friend.


Despite the endless poop jokes and fifty bajillion "hey Aly, look at the bug"s, we I had a great day. Beatrice was "pooped" (he's rubbing off on me) and slept the whole ride home. Dreaming of pumpkins and elephant poop, I'm sure.