Penguins are for the birds

For the past year or so, Liv has had a fixation with black and white animals. She goes through phases where she’s “into” a certain type of animal for awhile, then her fixation shifts to another cuddly animal for a few months, then on to the next, and so on. She told me about the progression recently: “First, I was into Dalmation puppies, then I was into pandas. Then I was into penguins!”

She was actually “into” pandas for a good year or more. What finally shook her from pandas was the penguin unit in her first grade class, where they learned in-depth about all the different species of penguins. So the ubiquitous panda drawings around the house became penguins instead, and our dinner conversations consisted of where Rockhoppers lived and how Macaroni penguins only live in Chile.

So in the midst of her penguin fixation, one day she brings home a book she checked out from the library about 2 penguin friends, it’s called “And Tango makes 3″. She had been waiting all day for me to read it to her for her night-time story. So I start reading. It’s a fun story about the animals that live at the Central Park Zoo in New York. Among the animals there are a small colony of penguins. It describes how the penguins live and play, and how the babies grow up, and the boy and girl penguins pair off and become couples, then have eggs of their own, etc.. all well and good. Then it starts into how there are two boy penguins that like to play with each other, and they don’t really notice the girl penguins. They’re named Roy and Silo. Hmmm…this sounds vaguely familiar. I think I read about something like this somewhere… The plot thickens… they find a round rock and pretend it’s an egg, and act like a paired couple, though they are two males. Oh yeah. I do remember this story. A few years ago there were some gay penguins in Central Park that made the news. Seriously? Am I really going to have a discussion about gay penguins with my seven-year old tonight at 9 pm? I just want to relax and watch Lost tonight. For real. I don’t want to deal with this. So, long story short, the zookeepers think it would be fun to give these confused lads a real egg, which they care for and hatch. They name the baby chick “Tango”, cuz it takes 2 to tango! How clever. Kind of ironic, since the two had apparently “tangoing” for quite some time to no avail! I finished the story and decide to see what happens. To its credit, the book is mostly factual, and doesn’t overtly push a particular point of view. But I decided to see what Liv would think. I finish the book and shut it.

“So. What did you think?”

“Well… it was kinda weird.”

Then she starts giggling.

“It’s funny! It’s like they’re gay or something!”

So then I start laughing. “Yeah! They’re kinda confused, huh?”

I asked her if she liked the book. Turns out she was expecting something a bit more pedestrian, maybe about penguins playing and swimming or something. She clearly got the bait and switch.

After I tucked her in,  a thought occurred to me. From an evolutionary standpoint, isn’t it a bit irresponsible for the zookeepers to encourage this behavior in such a small population? Since the chicks learn their behavior from observing the adults, doesn’t it introduce a messy paradigm to be so cavalier about tossing eggs to gender-confused waterfowl? It’s not sustainable, as someone eventually still needs to fertilize that egg…I’m just sayin’.

It’s not really on the radar anymore; Liv’s fickle tastes have moved on now…. to Huskies. That’s even more controversial around here than gay penguins.

Night of the Living Sugar-high Offspring

The 3 musketeers, on the hunt for "3 Musketeers"

Halloween on the Palouse is always a risky endeavor. Usually there’s a good chance of rain. Some years it’s been 10 degrees outside and windy. We lucked out this year and had a fairly mild night. After missing Halloween last year (we were on the magical mystery tour through California) , our kids were keen to hit the streets in search of sugary plunder. Well, at least the block. They were not disappointed. This year Amelia was a “zombie prom date”, Alec was a mad scientist (witness the powder-burns around the goggles), and Olivia was a baby jaguar. But not “THE” baby jaguar, she’s quick to point out. Now that she’s getting older she’s above watching “Diego” and Dora the Explorer.

After letting them have their way with the candy explosion for a couple days, we have now combined all the candy, sequestered most of it to the freezer, and given them a reasonable amount to ration out as they see fit over the next few days. I know, we’re mean that way.  Here’s more pics:

At the ward "trunk or treat" a few days earlier

Ian as "Dr. Horrible". Awesome.

The joy of fishin’

Hell's Canyon above Pittsburgh landing

Last week  some of our good friends invited us to go sturgeon fishing on a jet boat on the Snake River. On the way down I took this picture looking down on Hell’s Canyon.  It was a beautiful autumn day; not too cold, but  definitely jacket weather. Another benefit was the fact that the abundant poison ivy along the riverbanks had turned to brilliant oranges and reds for the fall, so when we made stops along the shore the kids could easily avoid them.

We were hoping to catch (and release) a few sturgeon. Along the way, we fished for small-mouthed bass and steelhead trout. Luckily the river is teeming with bass so it doesn’t take much to be easily gratified. Especially when you have worms! After several tries we finally got a bite by a sturgeon just after lunchtime. The thing with sturgeon is that you don’t just reel them up. They’re typically 4 to 6 feet long and can sometimes get (as we soon found out) up to 11 or more feet long.  Normally it takes 15 to 30 minutes of reeling and letting out line to wear them out enough to finally pull them in and have a look, then let them go. Last time we went, we caught 3 or 4 sturgeon, ranging from 3 to 6 feet long, and it took 45 minutes or so for the last one. Today was a different story.

After the first half hour, it became evident that we had hooked an extremely large fish. Due to the exertion needed to pull up the weight of this fish, we had to rotate through shifts with the adults on board, each person taking a 10 to 15 minute shift on the rod. We would excitedly reel a few feet in, then the fish would decide to descend again at will and let more line out. 3 hours later, no progress. It wasn’t tiring at all. We finally decided to try using the boat to slowly pull it downstream a bit. No luck. the line eventually broke, and we admitted defeat. Our friend mentioned that he had never hooked a fish so large that he couldn’t pull it up. So we must have hooked one of the oldest and largest fish in the river, who had been there since before the dams were put in. Now we can tell people it was as big as we want because we don’t have pictures to prove otherwise! Here’s a picture of Mary’s turn at the reel:

Mary's turn at the rod