Dean decided to take an FMLA day yesterday and we spent it as a family at the zoo. At one point, we stopped by the mountain lion
exhibit. We couldn't see them at first, and then we finally spotted them, lazing about on top of a rock. Then Robin spotted a
tactile display of a mountain lion footprint in front of their exhibit which really excited him. He touched it and pointed at it, all
while emitting happy high-pitched shrieks. Once he did that, the heads of both mountain lions popped up, and one of them gathered its muscles beneath it in a clear stalk-or-pounce pose. Just at the moment that Dean and I asked each other "is he stalking us?" it hopped down from the rock and came right up to the wire fence keeping it inside. It stood up on its hind legs with its forepaws on the fence, and then fell back to all fours and stood right at the fence, staring at Robin (who was still happily shrieking and had no idea that something wanted him for supper.) Dean turned into muscle-Dad and glared at the mountain lion, and told it "don't touch my son, I'll poke you in the eyes, then we'll see how well you'll survive." The mountain lion stayed with us even after other people arrived in front of its exhibit, and it followed us to the edge of its enclosure when we left. It was really rather disconcerting to see a predator's "seek out the young/old/ill" hunting methods in action, especially when directed at my son. I've never really been concerned about meeting wildlife while out hiking before, but now all the news stories of mountain lions carrying off children while their parents run frantically behind are taking on a new light, and I'm thinking we should probably buy some bear spray for our occasional sojournes into the mountains. Don't touch my son!!!!! (No, I didn't take any pictures of the mountain lion. Sorry.)
In other animal news, we now have a snake. It's residing in the corner of our garage. Dean found it a few days ago while he was putting our dumpster away. We thought about trying to coax it out into the flower bed, but it quickly disappeared into a crack between the floor and wall of the garage when we tried, which leads me to believe it goes outside to eat and just calls the garage home. We have yet to make any serious attempt to catch it, and we're not quite sure what to do with it once we do. We have no idea where to take it to. I don't think I would mind it living in our yard and eating pests, but unless we plug those cracks up, it would probably just move back into the garage--and it would probably find other ways into the garage even if we did. The jury's still out on this one, so stay tuned.
And now for some lighter stuff. This is Robin's first grilled cheese sandwich.
This is a video of Robin crawling around in the fountain in Boulder, which I forgot to include with the last entry.
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