Animals Galore

If you are an animal lover, Disney's Animal Kingdom is the place for you.

That's where we went on Wednesday, Bigger Girl and i got there very early and went on the Safari ride first thing.

Disney is committed to providing quality care for their animals to the point where they have eliminated zoo pacing behavior, they grow much of their own food for the herbivores, and they have researchers on site who make most of the feed for all of the animals and analyze foods made by other companies to see what can be improved.

Their employees stress that wild animals may be cute, but do not make good pets. Only positive training techniques are used when training animals for shows, and an animal that doesn't want to do something isn't forced to. When the tigers didn't want to go through the tunnel to their usual daytime area, they didn't. Where does that 500 pound gorilla sit? Wherever he wants, of course. Even the birds in the show are not restrained from flying away in any way. They stay because they are well treated.

The daring members of the family rode the water rapids ride several times, did the Everest Expedition roller coaster, and got themselves thoroughly wet and dizzy with fun. Bigger Girl and i wandered to animal watch to our heart's content.

The evening before, Sam had called #1 Son to tell him the generator was running. By Tuesday night had stopped and there was no electricity to the house. So when we met for lunch, Sweetie had made several calls to see what we could find out, and finally The Mouth actually went outside to see if he could figure out what was wrong.

The storm the day before had disconnected our power line from the house! The generator came on as it should, but shut itself off after several hours, we are not sure why. It has just been serviced, so that should not have happened. Still, we were without power for only about 18 hours, and Entergy put it in as an emergency call and got it reconnected again quickly. Because the disconnect was from their transformer, which had blown a fuse and popped the line, we didn't have to hire an electrician to deal with a reconnect like if it had been on our side of the line. It was a few harrowing hours wondering what was going on, putting it to the back of my mind since i couldn't do anything anyway, and enjoying myself anyway, then it all worked out.

Lunch was at the Rainforest Cafe on site, and everyone was there. We laughed and joked and it was a lighter time because we knew by then that the house was going to be worked on within an hour or two. My brother teased #2 Son mercilessly while they both practically had fits of hysteria. Then we went our separate ways with plans to meet up again for dinner.

Fulton's Crab House is #2 Son's favorite place on Disney property. It is in Downtown Disney, which is mostly shopping, food, nightclubs, and one 5 story arcade for kids. Bigger Girl and i arrived there to wander after over an hour trip to get down there, and the rain, which was supposed to come in Thursday morning (the same storm that cut off our electricity back home), arrived a little early.

That was okay, we ducked int0 shops and had fun looking until it was time to meet everyone. After we ate, we walked from shop to shop toward the exit to avoid getting too wet, and called it a night. Another late one, of course, with only one exception bedtime was after 11pm every night.


Today is:

Canberra Day -- Australia

Commonwealth Day -- Commonwealth of Nations

Constitution Day -- Andorra

Fallas de San Jose -- Valencia, Spain (Through the 19th)

Feast of Hyperborea

Genius Day (for Einstein, of course)

International Ask A Question Day

Heroes' Day -- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Learn about Butterflies Day

Mother Tongue Day -- Estonia

National Potato Chip Day

National Pi Day - Why today? Because today is 3.14, the value of Pi.

Runic Half Month Beorc (Birch) begins

St. Matilda, Queen of Germany's Day

Vaturius Mamurius -- Ancient Roman Calendar (Festival to Armor)

White Day -- China; Japan; South Korea; Taiwan (One month after Valentine's Day, when women give gifts to men, the men return the favor.)


Birthdays Today:

Justin Bieber, 1994
Colby O'Donis, 1989
Taylor Hanson, 1983
Kirby Puckett, 1961
Pam Ayres, 1947
Billy Crystal, 1947
Michael Caine, 1933
Quincy Jones, 1933
Frank Borman, 1928
S. Truet Cathy, 1921
Hank Ketcham, 1920
Les Brown, 1912
Albert Einstein, 1879
Johann Strauss, Sr., 1804


Today in History:

The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice, 1489
England grants a patent for Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island), 1644
Scotland dismisses Willem III & Mary Stuart as king & queen, 1689
Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin, 1794
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded in New York, 1821
Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado premiers in London, 1885
During the Great Blizzard of 1888, New York receives its second largest snowfall on record, 21", 1888
The United States goes on the gold standard, 1900
Hugo de Vries rediscovers Mendel's laws of genetics, 1900
The first theater for rear movie projection is built, in NYC, 1931
A jury in Dallas, Texas, finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy, 1964
Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released, 1994
Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle, 1995