Pine Mountain, Georgia has a drive-thru zoo: Wild Animal Safari. It’s been there for years. Over the years I’ve seen signs for it and, like the various alligator parks in Central Florida and Cherokee Indian dance shows in Gatlinburg, TN, I’ve driven by them without much thought. This past week I loaded into a gas-hogging SUV with my father, brother-in-law, seven kids, and five large bags of Safari Chow.

This place is crazy. I don’t think it would be legal in Massachusetts. After buying tickets and being warned that you drive your vehicle through the park at your own risk, you enter the gates of a 200-acre park, with a 3.5 mile winding one-lane road, over hills and around a small lake with water the color of Georgia red clay. As soon as you enter the gates, hoards of large animals line up to stick their heads inside your vehicle and to bless you with Holy Slobber. In exchange for chunks of food. Animals like the Yakatusi, the Nilgai, the Rhea, the Black Buck Antelope, the Watusi, and the North American Elk. Lots of Elk.

One memory the kids will never forget is when the three-story Giraffe stuck its head into our vehicle, allowing them to pet its head, dripped about one cup of spit onto my head, and then took an entire bag of our food, eating it, bag and all, and dropping a few pieces to the flock of ostriches at its feet.

The park also has Bear, Wolves, Hyena, Tigers and Ligers (one of the rare cases of a Tiger-Lion hybrid in captivity, sounds like a big zookeeper Oops to me). But these are, fortunately in a separate walk-through and properly caged part of the park.

Here are some pictures from the park, and if you’re ever in West Central Georgia, and need a little Giraffe Hair Gel, find this place.

Today, during the twenty minutes of sunshine…

Amy’s ride on the Fourth of July.

UPDATE: Click here to visit Xtracycle’s website. This pic made their homepage!

Everybody say “Happy Birthday!”

A big Congraduations to my oldest James. Last day of school. Last day of 5th grade. Last day of Elementary School!

(gulp)

James has posted a photo gallery of his class and the festivities.

This picture is from the first day of Kindergarten, last September. Today is the last day of Kindergarten. Thank you (again) Miss Vaites!

And here are pics from the ceremony:

Today was Nantucket Elementary School’s annual Fifth Grade Egg Drop Day. NFD brings out the ladder truck, which is raised to 105 feet over the asphalt court in the playground, and each 5th grade teacher goes up the ladder and releases the egg-containing apparatuses, one at a time. The resulting splats make for good entertainment.

The rules were simple. Make something small enough to fit in a grocery bag that would protect an egg from its dive. James did not turn to the library, borrow an old Physics text, or even use Google to prepare for the project. Instead, he consulted YouTube. And came up with the idea of using Oobleck.

Oobleck is the fictional green precipitation invented by children’s author Dr. Seuss in the book Bartholomew and the Oobleck. More recently, it has been used to describe non-Newtonian fluid made from Cornstarch and water.

A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid that varies its viscosity according to the shear stress that it is under. Hold it in your hands and it is a liquid and runs through your fingers like milk. But stab the surface with a spoon and it acts more like a solid and is hard to penetrate. The recipe is simple. Two parts Cornstarch; one part water. In this case, about 24 oz of cornstarch in about 14 oz water. Plus a little green coloring for dramatic effect. He put it in a plastic mailing tube that we found at the office, put the egg in, saw that it laid on top of the mess, and sealed the end pieces with duct tape. And that was that. No real opportunity for a test run. Not at that height.

It survived the fall!

An interesting article about teaching children how to argue or, more specifically, how to be persuasive instead of fighting or throwing a tantrum.

Those of you who don’t have perfect children will find this familiar: Just as I was withdrawing money in a bank lobby, my 5-year-old daughter chose to throw a temper tantrum, screaming and writhing on the floor while a couple of elderly ladies looked on in disgust. (Their children, apparently, had been perfect.) I gave Dorothy a disappointed look and said, “That argument won’t work, sweetheart. It isn’t pathetic enough.”

She blinked a couple of times and picked herself up off the floor, pouting but quiet.

“What did you say to her?” one of the women asked.

I explained that “pathetic” was a term used in rhetoric, the ancient art of argument. I had happened across the subject one rainy day in a library and become instantly obsessed. As a result Dorothy had learned almost from birth that a good persuader doesn’t merely express her own emotions; she manipulates her audience. Me, in other words.

Under my tutelage in the years that followed, Dorothy and her younger brother, George, became keenly, even alarmingly, persuasive. “Well, whatever it was,” the woman said, “it certainly worked.” Sure it did. I’ve worked hard at making my kids good at arguing. Absolutely.

I found a new object to buy oinline, something that would be an investment in my kid’s future.

The Study Ball gadget is a prison-style ball and chain that you can program to keep track of how much time you spend studying. Once you’ve selected the desired duration, you chain the ball to your ankle and the manacle won’t come off until the schedule study time is up.