The Real Sloth Hiking Team

We've had quite a few good laughs about this today. You know the joke- Sloth Hiking Team. We will get there when we get there.

In February, Loretta went to the Amazon. Yes, THE Amazon. She even got to hold the baby sloth. The picture above is Mama.

The baby actually had enough energy to look slightly awake. Sloths sleep about 15 hours a day.

As if this wasn't funny enough, the candy wrapper from some chocolate we ate had sloth facts. They have the lowest metabolic rate of any mammal. They can fall 100 feet without getting hurt, and on average a sloth will fall out of a tree about once a week for its entire life. They move an average of 125 feet a day.

We took a small slothful walk of our own on the Ed Malkowski Nature Trail which was created by students at Mason County Central School. It needs maintenance badly, but we were able to follow it past the little pond.

One perk of our walk was ripe blackberries!

Other than that, I spent most of the day writing an article for Outdoors.com.

See Nature Center in Winter

Seneca Park Zoo - African Animals

  This is the zoo that Irene and I went to 2.5 years ago. We really had a spectacular experience today. Almost all the animals came out to show off for us. I'll just show you the African animals today. They were almost all indoors on our previous trip beause it was winter. Gotta love the giraffes.

I hadn't ever really grasped how much bigger they are than zebras before today.

The elephants are fed part of the time from high feeders to simulate what they would need to do in the wild.

The white rhinocerous was mostly just walking around, but it was startled by a small machine that was moving some materials, and I thought this was a more interesting picture.

The lions were mostly sleeping, but they were fun to watch- acting like any cat of any size. Finally, the male looked up. Check out the one on the hood of the bus in the background.

Finally for today, there were a number of baboons. They were playing and grooming themselves. I liked this one.

Here we are: Irene, Marie, and me. We had a really good time, and there are more pictures for another day.

One more day for Marie and me to spend together. We plan to just chill and enjoy it.

See Seneca Park Zoo- Mammals

Just Chillin'

 
I'm still with Ester, and we mostly concentrated on not doing very much. That was perfect for me! I did take a little 4-mile walk around her country block. A lovely pastoral scene



I hope the kids are coming back to put the pony away. Meanwhile, it was waiting patiently.



And this smallish woodchuck was keeping an eye on me.



I have more pictures from the trail for you, but may need to get home with my books to nail down some identifications first. I think there is another day of chillin' ahead.

However, I am sort of beginning to think about it being time to get my head back into author mode. Sort of. I read the first five chapters of The Lonely Donkey to Ester, and she likes it. That may motivate me.

See Super Quality Days

One Cute Reason I Gave Up Gardening

 
Look who owns the back yard. S/he was enjoying dinner. I was thinking I'll need to cut the grass soon.



She saw me and ran for her burrow (back by the house foundation... darn... that's not so good). Look at the cute little hand.



How's this for a "What do you want? This is my space" look?



In other news: worked on taking notes from the journal recording in the morning, and then kept banging away on my worklist all afternoon. Doesn't look like I did anything, but I keep trying.

There's going to be a fun activity coming up this weekend. Stay tuned.

	See Ohio Wildlife
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Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show - Twiggy

 
This will probably be the last post about the Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show. But I saved this for last because it's something I've always wanted to see. OK, not a burning bucket-list goal to chase, but I have been very curious, and now I've seen the real deal. It's Twiggy, the water-skiing squirrel!



This year is Twiggy's final tour. The handler said she'd be doing some shows near home base, but they've been traveling with the squirrel(s) since about 1980, and I think the humans are more tired than the squirrel.

The lady in the blue vest lifted Twiggy from her cage. This was directly in front of me, so I got to see Twiggy snuggle in, and then go for a little excursion around the inside of the vest.



Here's some of Twiggy's story. The first Twiggy was rescued in 1979 when she was orphaned after Hurricane David. She became a family pet, and then someone dared the lady's husband to teach the squirrel something crazy... like water-skiing. Apparently he was a guy who couldn't let that pass, and thus was born a phenomenon!

They take advantage of the novelty to promote water safety to kids... thus Twiggy's little life jacket. They talked about learning to float and how to be safe around water.

If you have concerns that the squirrel is stressed by all this, I don't think you need to worry. This does not look like a stressed animal!



So, the "skis" are a little platform with toe holes and a bar to hold on to. The rig is pulled by a remote control boat. It goes fast enough that I only got one picture in focus, and this isn't it. But at least you can see the whole set-up in this picture. The crew in the boat is stuffed animals.



She put Twiggy in the water, so the kids could see that the squirrel can swim. She swam fast to the skis and climbed on board, no worse for the wear, except her tail was wet and heavy and drooped in the water after that. Here's my in-focus shot.



What can I tell you? It was fun. The squirrel seems to think it's fun too- she didn't want to get off the ski. Gray squirrels can live up to 20 years in captivity, but even so this must be Twiggy number 3 or 4. (There are probably several squirrels all trained at the same time, now.)

In other news: work, work on taxes, work on book formatting, back to work tonight. See you tomorrow!

	See Fairy Garden
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Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show- Live Animals

 
At the Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show, Ester and I decided to wander through the other two halls which were exclusively retail. Except we sort of forgot that one end was devoted to family and children's activities. We stumbled onto a petting zoo. The animals were really calm. I'm not sure why the rabbits were all content to just sit still in their open containers (boxes, pails, etc) and wait for the next little kid, but they were.



The pony looked bored. I hope he was only bored and not sad.



The liveliest critters were the baby goats. They were hopping on and off mom constantly. She was completely unperturbed by eight hard little hooves



The lambs' major goal was to butt the pig and get it to run around.



I liked the tuxedo rabbit best.



This was a nice find in the midst of all the patio bricks and roofing and siding companies. It made me smile to see the children interacting with the creatures. I'm sure city and suburban kids get few chances to do this on a regular basis. (Not pictured was a chicken that appeared to love being petted, and some baby ducks)

	See Fort Wayne- Decorative Animals
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Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show- Decorative Animals

 
Since most of the Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show was more about selling things than wowing people with displays, one had to look for little gems hidden among the vendors. However, I think this first one, the primary colored bull, was just a display. He's cute. He'd go well in my kitchen (except I do not need any more stuff).



I'm not exactly sure what you are supposed to do with these little heads on sticks, but they are happy. Maybe you just stick them in the garden so there is a smiling face poking through the blossoms.



The laid-back frog is for my buddy Lin.



The most amazing art was being sold by a lady who makes these from leather. Each is unique. She sculpts the form for the animal head, then molds and arranges the leather over it. Eventually, when the leather is dry, she breaks the form out. She had horses and wolves.



But her most impressive was this bison.



Today, Ester and I just chilled and fixed a nice meal at her house. I took a couple of walks and finished The ABZ Affair.

	See Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show intro
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Buckeye Trail Completion, Day 3

 

Day three, Sunday April 23, was sunny but not hot. Our campsite was positioned perfectly along the trail, so we only had to drive a car to our starting location and walk back to camp. And then go retrieve the other car, of course.

We see a lot of the tiger swallowtails on our hikes, but they are always good for a picture. The scourge of the hike was autumn olive, in full bloom, but the butterfly seems to like it.



I know Ohio is the Buckeye State, and we did see plenty of buckeye trees, but sycamore also says Ohio to me. Here's a beauty.



Our early miles took us over a ridge with more of those great farm country views.



And the residents of the farms are always good for some fun. The sheep watched us with interest.



But the goats were more curious, although they didn't think we were interesting enough to stand up for. We thought this trio was especially funny. It would need a video, but the two goats that make bookends hardly moved a muscle. The one behind bars kept poking her head in and out and definitely wanting to escape. Just after I took the picture, another one, a color match for the two lying down peeked around the corner of the shed.



Horses are almost always curious about us.



After these 2.5 road miles, we entered AEP land (the reclaimed mining lands). There are 26 continuous miles of off-road foot trail here, quite a long stretch for the Buckeye Trail. Most off-road sections are multi-use, and often paved. It was nice to have so many miles in the woods.



We reached our campsite at 3 pm, and did some hill driving on the way to get the other car. The view from the top of Cobb Hill Road was impressive, and I put two pictures into a panorama. This gives a better sense of what we were seeing while we walked instead of the standard size pictures.



Miles for the day: 9. Total so far this trip: 26.1. Belle Valley, points 26-30.

(Oh yeah, there was the usual piece of missing trail. This time, quite a big piece. A new gas pipeline is being installed and the trail was bulldozed and filled with brush piles. To go around overland required pushing through autumn olive groves. So we went back to an access road and walked out to a real road to rejoin the trail at the bottom of the hill. At least it wasn't long or hard to figure out what to do.)

	See Day 2
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