That's it!

I’m tired of foxes. I’m done with Jeff. It’s over. I’m now a Bowie Bear fan now!

A present we won't forget…

Today Charlotte and I woke up and drove down to Boston, getting lost along the way thanks to some bad Google directions, to the New England Aquarium. Charlotte’s sister, Rebecca, had bought each of us a birthday present to be an animal trainer for a day. The training started off with us heading to the harbor seal tank to meet some staff behind the scenes and then do a little training with Cayenne and Trumpet, 2 of the seals.

The seals are trained to each have a target, a different object to put their nose on to start training. One had a blue Tupperware bin and the other had a stick attached to a white ball. I asked if the training was just for entertainment and the trainer, Cheryl, said the moves are helpful for providing medical care. Cheryl had us wave our hand and one of the seals waved back. She tried to get one to kiss me on the check and it wanted none of that. Figures.

We then went to the food preparation room and helped Holly prepare tomorrow’s toys for the harbor seals. The toys are actually dog toys that we wind strips of car wash cloth through in knots and mazes and then stuff up to 3 herring fish inside. We made the toys and then Cheryl placed them into metal buckets that she filled with water. The buckets are placed into large freezers for tomorrow’s play time.

We then head downstairs and worked with Belinda to train a lungfish. She told us that the lungfish is an ancient fish and she was trying to train it to hit its target: a floating rubber bulb attached to a stick. We took photos of Charlotte and myself holding the stick in and it floating around. At first it was watching the target but finally decided to hit the target. Very quickly it was hitting the target and getting shrimp in no time.

Belinda introduced us to Paul, who showed us different marine objects like the tusk of a walrus. Then we held baleen from a whale that Paul said might be from a humpback whale. Charlotte and I went whale watching about a year ago so holding the baleen was interesting. It filters the water so the whale is left with any food it can eat. Paul then took us back to the harbor seals with toothbrushes and the frozen toys Holly had made yesterday.

Paul had 2 other seals, Chuck and Amelia, come by and open their mouths so that we could brush their teeth. The seals held their mouths open and were rewarded for doing a nice job. Next, it was time for the toys.

Charlotte and I each held out the strands of car wash cloth attached to the frozen water with the toys and herring fish inside. The ice melted quickly and the seals were taking turns biting (sometimes not taking turns and biting all at the same time) to get to the fish. I got some pictures of Charlotte sitting on rocks near the water with seals swimming around.

This concluded our day as trainers but we stayed at the museum since our passes allowed us to go through the regular exhibits. The aquarium was crowded but we were able to see lots of animals, including Myrtle the turtle. We had learning in our training that she is hibernating but the trainers are not sure if this is because the water temperature doesn’t change, as her natural waters would in the wild.

We want to say thank you to Rebecca for the wonderful adventure she signed us up for. The photos are posted on Flickr and are accessible on the sidebar.

Yes, it did snow this much…

After three days, the snow has stopped for hours and I went outside. This was the deepest spot I could find. I kept finding deeper and deeper spots and eventually stopped when it was getting too hard to walk in the snow. As always, you can see the rest of the 4 photos on the sidebar or at Flickr.

Surviving the ice storm of 2008

As you may know, an ice storm hit much of New England the evening of December 11, 2008 and went through the early hours of December 12, 2008.  The storm knocked out power to many states, apparently hitting us in New Hampshire the worst.  The electric company in New Hampshire reported over 350,000 people without power, and that’s just in our state!  School was canceled for me Friday so that morning after the storm I went out to take photos of the frost and icicles left over.  Our power was out until late Saturday night.  Charlotte and I had no power or water, since our water uses an electric pump.  We slept in front of our gas fireplace, which went out late Friday night.  I’m guessing the wind outside entered the chimney and blew out the pilot light. Who knows.

For more about the storm:
Read storm details
More on the storm

Photos of the storm are at Flickr:
Visit the Flickr album

Photos are also linked on the sidebar to the right, just click on the Recent Photos displayed.

 

 

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