Meeting tiny turtle

I was thrilled to meet a new friend, tiny turtle. I asked him several times what his name was but he never would tell me, so I decided to call him tiny turtle. He was very happy to get to play with me but I had a hard time keeping him still so I could pet and observe him, he wanted to explore.

He seemed to like when I lay down beside him and was more than happy to crawl all around me.

And all over me.

I never knew tiny turtles were so active, or so fast. This little guy could really get around.

Every time I put him on my lap, he crawled right off of it.

After several tries, I finally gave up on holding him and settled for watching him crawl around me.

Settling in

There is much to see and do in my new home. I barely climbed out of my box before discovering that construction was underway inside the big people's house. One of the big people was hard at work building a cabin. I quickly offered my expertise in cabin building and was put right to work.

We put the walls up first, making sure to add a window.

Of course, no cabin would be complete without a roof, so we made sure to add one. I wasn't too happy with the way it turned out, flat roofs don't do real well in bad weather.

But my dog thought it was great, quickly making himself at home. I still don't know how he got up there.

I made a nice little area for him, complete with water, food, and soda...just in case.

And then I went to work on another cabin.

All in a days work.

Looking for flowers

With the pioneer Hitty house growing more and more crowded, I decided to set off for a walk in the woods. I had in mind to hunt for more mushrooms but when little Brother, Justin, tagged along, I let him lead the way. As preoccupied as he's been with our new family member, 'another boy' as he calls him, I was surprised to find him dogging my steps. It was nice to have him along though. He is still fairly new to the pioneer Hitty house and there's much I still don't know about this new little brother.

Justin spotted a cozy spot in the foliage and trekked right in. In no time he had settled right in and soon convinced me to join him. It was a nice, cool area to get out of the sun. We enjoyed looking at all the greenery around us. It won't be long before our pretty green woods give way to the browns and grays of winter in the woods.

I've never seen winter in the woods but I've heard about them since I came to the Pioneer Hitty house. I have a hard time imagining these beautiful plants giving up all these green leaves.

Justin is excited about the coming change of seasons. He's pretty sure it will be neat to watch the trees lose all their leaves. For now, though, we are both very happy to enjoy the greenery.

Even with all the greenery still lingering, it's not hard to see what our woods might be like without the leaves. This area was mostly brown and gray except for the tiny pine trees that were trying to grow.

It's even harder to imagine these Hitty sized trees growing into giant, towering trees, that will dwarf anything around them. I hear they grow to around 100 feet tall, some of them taller than that.

With a little searching I was able to find a wonderful walking stick. The ground here is uneven and all covered in bark and other loose things just waiting to trip us as we walk by. Justin had no interest in a walking stick though.

He was more interested in the little trees and measuring himself against them.

This pretty little yellow flower was growing all alone. I'm not looking forward to the flowers disappearing but I hear that winter has its own beauty and so I'm hoping that is true. I'm sure I've experienced winter before but my amnesia seems to be permanent and so I have the chance to experience life afresh, as if I was a tiny child just discovering the world. I must admit that has its advantages and disadvantages.

These little purple berries grow on bushes all over our woods. I sure wish I knew what kind they were. I've heard that most purple/black berries are edible but I'm kind of afraid to put that to the test. What if they're poisonous?

They sure are pretty though and they look like they should be tasty. Perfect Hitty sized berries or grapes.

Justin was going to try them, I had to pry one out of his little fingers and toss it into the woods to keep him from tasting it. He was sure it wouldn't hurt him and was willing to test the theory.

I found a whole batch of those lovely little yellow flowers. Aren't they pretty?

I barely had time to smell the little yellow flowers. Justin was shouting my name and insisting I 'come see' what he found. And my, oh my, what beautiful flowers he found. These are much prettier than the little yellow ones. So delicate and pretty. I would love to have a bunch of these to brighten up the house with.

They are the perfect Hitty size and fit my hand so nicely.

Justin was so sweet. He picked a perfect flower and offered it to me just because he knew I liked it. Thank you, Justin.

There were certainly enough flowers to fill a vase with, although I refrained from doing so. They were just too pretty as a field of flowers.

Justin tried to get me to explore more but I just couldn't leave the lovely flowers. I think this might be my favorite place in our woods.

How could I leave this behind to go explore elsewhere. I chose to wait here while Justin went exploring.

A day at the zoo

We woke up to a surprise this morning...a day at the zoo. We had no idea we were going so we had no time to prepare but that was okay because it was so much fun we didn't notice that we weren't prepared.

Once we got to the zoo we started our day at the petting zoo. This guy was very friendly as long as you were a little person or had food in your hand. It wasn't the least bit interested in us.

The lady working in the petting zoo said these are miniature cows but they didn't look all that miniature to me. They were babies too. They haven't been at the zoo very long and were not the least bit friendly. They kept their distance and cried for their breakfast.

 These gibbons, at least I think that's what they were, kept howling and making so much noise that they made Tillie's head hurt.

Every time we tried to walk away the monkeys got loud again. We finally just gave up and left them to their howling and hollering.

Tillie spotted a mushroom growing just on the other side of a fence. She said she hadn't seen one like that before. I asked her if she really liked mushrooms and she said no. Girls. Why make such a fuss over something you don't even like? But Tillie did. She insisted on having her picture taken with it, said she needed it to show she had seen another kind of mushroom. I told her it was just a fungus and who cares about fungus. I think I hurt her feelings because she said, 'Brothers,' and threw her hands up in the air like I did something wrong.

Robin took a liking to these monkeys. They were just as loud as the others but she didn't seem to mind. She said the lighter colored one was cute.

I thought they were cuter than the fungus.

Robin liked the monkeys but didn't care for their name, she said they should be called cute gibbons instead.

She spent a long time talking to this one.

Robin...Robin...

Can we please go see something else now? Please???

Tillie didn't seem to think that was a very good idea either. She snatched me by the shirt and pulled me back to point out how cute Robins monkeys were. Uh, yeah...cute. Can we go find something a little less cute and a little more...fierce?

That wasn't what I had in mind, Hook. He took a liking to the bamboo forest and wanted to take some home with him.

We wound up leaving all the bamboo at the zoo.

We paused in our looking at animals to look at some information about the zoo.

We found a batch of very friendly ducks. 

Hook and Robin found them first.

There was a wooden overlook into the duck lagoon. It was nice and shady and made for a wonderful place to sit and rest our legs for a while.

When we were well rested, Tillie hopped up and ran over to inspect a tree covered in some kind of moss. She kept talking about how the moss had no roots, how it looked like it was fake, and how she couldn't tell how it was even living or growing.

The Canadian geese didn't want to come close to us. They kept their distance but let us look at them as much as we wanted to.

While we were looking at the geese, I discovered that where I was standing caused my shadow to show up on the sidewalk. That was neat.

Look at the green water. I wouldn't want to swim in that but it was such a nice shade of green. I didn't know water came in that color.

This sign was by the kangaroo enclosure. 

I had to sit by the enclosure for a long time waiting for a kangaroo to come out.

Sitting still isn't something I'm very good at. Robin says I'm a wiggle worm. Tillie tells me I must have ants in my pants. And Hook says I would either make a good pirate or else I would be made to walk the plank. I just think I'm a boy and boys weren't meant to sit still.

Is the kangaroo ever going to come out?

I finally gave up on the kangaroo and went looking for something else to see. Tillie came running after me, hollering about the kangaroo being out so we both ran back to see it. She said it looked more like a wallaby but I'm certain it's a kangaroo. The sign said it was a red kangaroo.

Leave it to Tillie to want to settle in and watch the kangaroo forever.

Tillie and I climbed a tree with a bunch of bumps growing on it while the others went to look in a greenhouse.

From our perch on the tree we spotted all sorts of fun things we hadn't seen yet.

The girls rushed over to look at the hippos. They didn't seem real happy to me. They wanted in the building but the door was closed.

Tillie thought it might be feeding time.

We finally got tired of watching the hippos wait anxiously to get inside and went to look at other things.

We found giant sized turtles with fences so high I had to climb the fence to see what was inside. Tillie and Robin could barely see inside by standing on their tiptoes.

This rock mountain was great. We got to climb to the top and stand on ground so uneven that there was no way to really stand. Every time I got my feet under me, I would wobble and had to sit down again so I wouldn't topple off the mountain.

We were beginning to wonder if we had missed the tiger when we stumbled on his enclosure. He was swimming in the water and started making purring sounds when we arrived.

While we watched the tiger spun circles in the water.

Round...

and round he went.

We found out that the tigers name is Timmy. And from what we could tell he was a friendly tiger. He seemed to enjoy us being there and acted like he wanted to go with us anytime we started to walk anywhere.

He would swim along below us, purring and 'talking' to us, as far as his enclosure would let him go.

These little monkeys were very friendly. It didn't take us long to discover that they were little beggars that wanted us to feed them.

Tillie was as interested in the flowers as she was the animals. She said this one was 'lovely'.

And she asked me if I thought it would look pretty in her hair. Um...yeah. Can we go look at animals now?

This is more like it. Look at all those scales, Tillie? How many teeth do you think he has? 

Tillie was more worried about whether or not the alligator would bite our hands off if we stuck them in the cage. She made me keep my hands in full view at all times.

This baby 'gator' was more to her liking but I didn't care much for the scrawny thing. Not only was it little but...

It had a nasty personality. It kept hissing at us and even made a gurgly growling sound. I had to admit that the noises it made were neat but look at him. There's nothing there compared to the alligator we saw outside.

Tillie didn't much care how much or how little of him there was. She said she wasn't eating it so it didn't matter how little it was. She kept calling it a gator and said gators are different than alligators.

Um, Tillie...gators and alligators are the same thing.

It would seem that they are not in Tillie's mind.

There was a really old tepee that I thought Hook and I should explore.

Tillie found a cave and insisted on going inside. I told her I had better go with her just in case she needed help.

The cave was an old tree stump with different tunnels in it.

We went in one way but from the back of the tree there was a tunnel that let Tillie be easily seen.

The sunlight through the tree/cave did strange things to our clothes.

Look at how we glow.

Not far from the tree/cave there was a sign that talked about Lewis and Clark and the tepee.

The sunlight in this part of the zoo wasn't very good. It made everything look kind of fuzzy or else glow.

This black bear was as curious about me as I was about it. While I watched the bear, the bear watched me.

There was more about Lewis and Clark scattered through the zoo. I came across this sign but didn't take the time to read it.

Tillie fell in love with the hibiscus flowers. She begged to get a bush like this at home. 

She begged for one like this too. It's hibiscus too and Tillie told us she loves hibiscus flowers. She said she wants bushes just like this at home.

Maybe someday Tillie.

For today...we reached the end of our time at the zoo and must head back to the pioneer Hitty house.

Back at the pioneer Hitty house with a pamphlet and some souvenirs.