Remember my last post...

...the one about a granddaughter's birthday coming up? Well, we did that. What I want to tell you is that the party itself, for nine kindergarten to 5th graders, was one of the best themed parties... for kids and adults.

On a very nice day, we had a small covered area in a nice local park on a lake, reserved. Fifteen minutes after everyone arrived, the owner of a small, private zoo-farm filled with rescue animals (about 70 of the non-killing-type), brought the six animals the birthday girl had requested.

For the next hour-and-a-half (which seemed to go by really fast), she took the animals, one at a time, from their cages and talked about them while the kids got to see, touch, hug as the animals played atop a picnic table the kids surrounded. The woman was very good... friendly and patient, and had all the facts and anecdotes especially entertaining to the kids (and adults)... but the animals were even better.

We had a capuchin monkey (the only one we couldn't touch because the little bugger was very fast and had long arms that grabbed anything and everything), a kinkajou (look it up), a 40 lb. bunny, a fennec (long-eared) fox, a hedgehog and, the star of the show, Arthur, the awesome opossum. And he really was.

Now it's not that Chuck-e-Cheese isn't great, or the gym or pottery making... it's just that we don't have a chance to get this close to real, live nature in the form of friendly, cuddly animals. Arthur, the awesome opossum is even house-broken and sleeps on the pillow besides his owner's head every night. Not for everyone? For sure. But touchy-feely is great when it happens this easy. Sadly, not every locale has something like this... but we do... so ha ha ha.