One of the things I do in my spare time (hah!) is volunteer for SCBWI. We’re having a terrific conference at the end of April for people who write and illustrate for kids.
We’re having an editor, an art director, and an author come rub shoulders with us for an entire weekend. Yes I’m being vague and mysterious.
Okay, it’s spring already, right? Apparently whoever is in charge of the weather is ignoring that particular bit of information. I was housebound yesterday.
This was the highway.
Yes, I was kinda standing on the roadway but there wasn’t exactly a big flow of traffic. And next is the highway looking in the other direction.
Happily the sun is shining today, so that 14 or so inches of new stuff we just got (according to the guy who snowplows my driveway) should make some kickin’ snowpeople. I hope. Because that new snow piled on top of all the rest of the snow we had before means the white stuff will probably be hanging around for awhile yet.
My fashion accessory here is a corn snake. Beautiful, no? Lent to me when we went to the Sciensational Sssnakes display at a local car dealership.
The snake took a liking to my shoulder but then it kept on going. It was crawling over my shoulder and started investigating my purse! I figured it would stop. Nope! It was actually disappearing into my bag. See?
So I’m standing there wondering what I should do. Do I pretend nothing’s going on? Do I wait for someone to notice a missing snake? Do I call for help and freak out just about every four year old in the place?
At last a man in charge came over to help. I had to take the bag off my shoulder and open it while he held the last visible bit of snake and tugged on it in order to extricate it. It was firmly wedged in there! Not sure exactly what it liked. It could have been the gum wrappers, old grocery lists, a paperback novel, pencil, eraser, hairbrush, hand sanitizer, notebook, pen, Canadian Tire coupons, ancient kleenexes, lone fuzzy Skittle, grocery receipts…. Maybe it just felt like home!
Maybe it’s time to clean out the purse.
***
(Thanks to my son who grabbed my phone to take the photos.) Here’s one last one of two other corn snakes.
During the March break we got to see a neat presentation on birds of prey put on by the people from the Wye Marsh. Here’s the snowy owl.
It didn’t want to do any flying for us. But after A LOT of coaxing, it finally flew to its perch and back again. Whee! What a whirl of feathers.
How do you learn not to freak when they land on your arm?
The great horned owl below was majestic. We were all told to respect this owl’s territory if we came across one in the wild. So noted to self. I think we have one prowling our bush.
Barn owls are cool looking. This guy below is eating a chicken leg. Yum!
And the red-trailed hawk (below) performed one dramatic flight demonstration. Besides pretty much skimming my head it flew into a ceiling tile and found the kitchen in this auditorium. Quite a crowd rousing performance! The bird was fine.
Speaking of fine, probably the finest part for the kids was the poop. Every bird demonstrated that ability for us. Spectacularly sometimes. Eew! The kids loved it.
Not sure the same can be said for the intern who had to clean it up.
