Duck Speak

So today was a lovely day, right? And the children were out of school early, so I decided to take them on a little adventure. Of course, we made a side-trip home first; bathroom business and what-not. Might as well drop off the backpacks as well.

Aaaand I meant to grab my camera, but figures, I didn't. Left it right there on my desk, so I didn't get any pictures. Sucks, too, because they would have been some good ones. As it stands, the pics I'm posting are just of my son, taken by my husband on a different day. But I wanted to show you where we were...

Anyway, we went to a little fishing lake. The girls had never been there... in fact, I just recently discovered it myself. It's a lovely local spot tucked back away from the road. If you didn't know it was there, you would never know it was there. Ironically, my Bonus Son Bryan has been fishing there for years. We had always assumed that he was going to some little fishing pond, not much to it. To think that for the two years we've lived here, we had no idea that such a delightful place existed.

Goes to show you, look around a bit more, right?

At any rate, today I decided to take the kids down there for a little fresh air. As I mentioned, The Man had taken Cappa there for a little fishing last weekend, so Cappa was familiar with it.

Observe:

*is he not a handsome kid? I think so*

So anyway, you can't see them, but this place is teeming with birds. Ducks, geese, pigeons, grebes, and cormorants. And they're pretty used to sharing space with humans, so they're not that shy. The Park Rangers come around daily and feed them bread and greens, and if you're lucky, they'll let you help.

Today we were lucky. We got to feed them bags and bags of bread. The kids were totally spazzing out. At first, "Delta" was a little nervous, but she didn't try and climb my leg or anything, and right soon enough she was having a grand ole time.

Then we headed on a looooong nature walk, along the many nature trails. The kids were all over the place. I should have worn my tennis shoes, but my bad, forgot to change into them before we left. At least I wasn't wearing flip-flops...

Then we strolled out onto the dock to take a break. We watched the ducks and the grebes swimming about, quacking and making a ruckus, and Delta started quacking right back. She would interpret for us what both she and the ducks were saying, thoroughly convinced that they were communicating. It was pretty cute. On the way home, Delta gave us a recap on her conversations with the ducks, and then announced that she is also "part duck" and that's why they understand each other.

We'll definitely be going back. The kids had a fantastic time, and can't wait to do it again.

And that is, as they say, that.

Peace.