Life: Idiotropic

**Update! Thanks to eIMAGE Recovery software I now have most of the photos I deleted! Yeah!


I just now realized the all too unpleasant drawback of a digital camera. My card, fully loaded with 259 photos, just got erased.

I did it. In coffee-induced hyperdrive, I made the assumption that the download was done when, in fact, the battery was too low to support it, so instead of double checking it, I erased the entire card. Efficiency at its worst. This is what happens when I'm trying to juggle computer/camera stuff with dinner and bath time running up and down the stairs every couple minutes and getting the laundry done in the downbeats.

So, I can't back up my daily notes with photos. It's sad.

Anyway... today -- drum-roll --

-- pregnant pause --



WE HAD SUN!!!!!!!


The first in what seems like an eternity, today was a truly beautiful and not frightfully cold autumn day! So, I grabbed the three little ones, and "sped" off to the Wildpark Gangelt. I say "sped" in quotes because that was the intent. We were excited. We wanted to go the speed limit plus a few KPM, but... from Gillrath to Gangelt, we were stuck in a parade length line of traffic all stuck behind a "turtles can saunter faster than this" paced overgrown tractor or sorts. When I say slow, I'm not exaggerating a bit. Seriously, I was passed by a bicycle - not once, or twice, but THREE times! And he wasn't even going very fast.

But, eventually we made it.

Now, on my way to Schinnen on the 274, there is this field of deer on the right through some trees that I noticed ever since we moved here and almost always look over at as I speed by. On the left is parking lot down below the highway with a line of International Flags by it. At least 30 times I've wondered how to get down there and where those trails led.

Today, I drove by that lot, drove under the 274 (didn't know it was possible), parked, then eventually walked right by that field of deer!

Wildpark Gangelt is just that - a wild-park in Gangelt - set up just like a zoo with a long loop with caged off natural areas for animals, but without the lions, elephants, and giraffes. Without the exotic, it would seem boring - I mean, the antelope are always my least favorite site at a zoo, but, at this zoo, you can feed almost all the animals - many - by hand. So my girls - even Elise - hand fed feed and acorns to countless deer, elk, and sheep. We also saw brown bear, otters, birds of prey, wolf, and moose that we couldn't feed, and about 50 wild boar running around that we could feed, but not by hand. Still, it was fun to see packs of 15 boar at a time babies and all come running towards us at full speed and even jumping over logs to get their handouts.

Elise was happy feeding the sheep near the playground while her sisters played - then, out of the blue, she came running to me with tears on her cheeks. I asked her where her bag was thinking she had finished the sheep food and dropped the bag. Nope. There was a pile of food on the ground where she'd stood and a very guilty sheep standing 2 feet in from the fence, white paper back in mouth, munching away like he'd won a prize.

The really fun thing was that I've always only seen deer from a distance. And it's fun and exciting to see them in the wild, but it's nearly impossible to ever get close. Here, there are deer farms, so I see them up close, I guess, but it's not the same knowing that they'll be dinner soon and I don't ever stop to feed them. Today we fed them, petted them, and talked to them. One walked along the fence like the most well-trained dog. Another wouldn't stop talking - a sound that I've never heard before - sounded like a large ally-cat coughing up a fur ball - not exactly cute.

Anyway... that was our day - a day of fantastic photo ops from the bicycle that passed me to my girls feeding various animals by hand, great animal pictures, terrific playground pictures, a darling photo of Elise with fresh tears on her cheeks after the sheep took her bag, and a gorgeous photo of an ambitious spider who'd caught a fly 3x his size in a web lit up by the sun. All great - and all gone except for the memory of them. I'm so tempted to go back tomorrow.