Dragons and Sea Stars and Doves! Oh Yeah!

On Tuesday morning, we left in Diego Car with Daddy. We had a 10 AM Ecology Class at the Rye Nature Center. Like he usually does, Alex was all about the negativity when we first got to the room. 'Let's go home!' he cried. 'I want to go home!'

Oh how rude.

He wouldn't play with any of the animal puppets. He wouldn't sit in the small chairs set up for the students. It wasn't until Adam, the teacher, brought out a big ol' bucket of water taken from Long Island Sound that Alex was paying attention. Adam and another naturalist there had gone down to the beach and waded out with large nets, capturing small sea animals and plants to bring back to the center. Alex got to hold a sea star and seaweed and even a crab. He wasn't crazy about holding the mud snails though.

Then the most exciting part happened. Adam brought out Hercules, the Australian Bearded Dragon...and Hercules' breakfast; some crickets. Once the lizard got out of his shock and wariness of the tots around him, he lapped up a hopping cricket and Alex shrieked with laughter. (Sorry, cricket). A second one met a similar fate and Alex was loving it all. He also got to see a bird's nest, Jose the Chinchilla, and Paloma the dove.

Then it was time to spot some birds outside. Adam had made some paper roll binoculars for the students, which we colored with crayons. Alex had other ideas. He only wanted to use the real binoculars - and the red ones only at that. Since Alex showed so much real interest in using them and showed an apitude in it, I promised to get him a pair when we got back to the town center in Rye. I'd never seen Alex so anxious to leave the Nature Center before. He even asked me if we could call for Diego Car to get there. He tried to convince me that walking on the road out of the Center was dangerous, but I wasn't buying it. "Don't walk out on the road, Mommy! There are cars coming!"

That's OK, Alex. It's a wide enough road that we can stay away from the cars.

We got an additional treat at the end of the road just short of the bridge near the entrance. We saw two young female deer foraging near the road. We even got to walk down a path and get fairly close. Alex says he saw them. I hope he did.

But the new red binoculars we got at the toy store in town were the real star of the day. He was so excited about them, he couldn't wait to get to music class the next day to show them to Miss Jennifer. 

What a fun day. He says he wants to go back next week. Yay!

Thursday, May 13