A CALM Sunday

I think we are a couple of the most boring people in the world. Our weekends are pretty darn dull, errands and grocery shopping and maybe cleaning something around the house or some yard work. Yesterday was even more boring than usual, we went to buy lunch stuff for the week then Keith was channel surfing on the TV and I was working on the computer and I got to thinking about how darn boring we are when I had an idea for something to do. The weather wasn't quite as hot as usual, only about 90 instead of 100 and there was a breeze in the air, so I remembered about CALM-the California Living Museum way on the other side of town. We had been there when we first moved here and had also gone at Christmas time for the light display that they have there at night during the holiday season-the entire zoo is lit up with holiday lights, many in the shape of zoo animals.

Now, this zoo is not your typical zoo with animals from all over the world. All of the animals here-and there aren't very many-are all native Californians, and most of them are rescue animals that were injured or orphaned.

The parking lot was almost empty, only about 10 cars there, half of which probably belonged to the employees, so we didn't have to deal with much in the way of crowds. We were told that there would be a mammal show at 2:00, so we went to the little outdoor theatre area but didn't see any activity, so we went to the reptile room and looked at some snakes-again, all California natives. Each exhibit has a map that shows what part of California the animals would be found in, which is kind of interesting. As we were looking at the snakes, a zoo employee came in to let us know that the show was starting.

I think all of the zoo employees were watching the show along with us and two other families-everyone had a front row seat!

Two girls had two orphaned raccoon babies on leashes and talked about raccoons with the raccoons climbing all over them the whole time. The raccoons were nervous because this was one of their first shows and they weren't used to the 'huge' crowds yet, so they kept climbing the girls and trying to get back into their carrier cage. Very cute watching them, I'd never seen a raccoon up close and personal like that before.

These little raccoons just climbed the girls like they were trees!

Coming tomorrow: the rest of our exciting zoo story!