Here's the post I promised

We spent Saturday at the Lichterman Nature Center in Memphis.

It was a free day, so there were about 42,456,234 kids there.

It was great!

The sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, and Anna Marie learned that not all skulls come from dinosaurs.

Seriously - they had a table with animal skulls on it, and every one she guessed either "dinosaur" or "sharp tooth" (like off The Land Before Time.)

Then, she got to feel some pelts. They had pictures of their former owners attached.



Where was PETA when these animals needed them?

We also saw a puppet show about bees called "Zzub zzub." Anna Marie was in the front row and gave her two cents worth at every opportunity.

(On a side note, there were two other kids on the floor, a boy and a girl who I gathered knew each other. The boy kept hitting the girl in the back, and she kept telling him to stop. Their grownups were behind us, and all they would do was say "Look, he's hitting her. I wonder why he's doing that?" Excuse me, but if my parents had caught me doing that, especially in public, I'd have been in a whole heap of trouble.)

After the puppet show, we went outside. These are some Canada Geese that were in the "marsh" area. Hopefully, they were unaware that a flock of their kinfolk were stuffed and hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the main room.



Anna Marie was trying her best to speak to them in their "honk" language, but for some reason they weren't responding. Hmm.

She was also treated to seeing a really big turtle swim across the lake, and something I've never seen - one of these geese coming in for a landing and splashing water on all his goose friends.

In another building, there were all sorts of animals that one might find in one's backyard. The dangerous ones were just plastic, though. That building also held the crafts tables, and she made a butterfly from a clothes pin, a little figure from pipe cleaners and beads, and a bookmark from feathers and dry flowers.

After a trip to the gift shop (and a lesson on staying within her budget of about $3.50, earned by doing chores for my aunt) we headed back home.

I really wish I had gotten more pictures, but the batteries died on my camera. They're rechargable, and we forgot to charge them, so we put them in the Jeep with the power inverter on the way up. It wasn't a long enough trip to charge them all the way.

She was so excited, she said she wanted to come back more often. I'll have to make sure my dad (who was running a water line for his new next door neighbor, my aunt) and my mom (who was in Texas helping said aunt pack up some of her worldly belongings) can come with us.

(Oh, and the way we got to go for free - someone donated a heap of money to the center, in honor of someone. They must be pretty fond of her, because she isn't even dead yet and they're giving money for folks to come for free.)