The Carnival

My oldest son's school had a carnival today.

My husband said to bring home a duck.

A duck?

Yeah, a duck, bring home a duck, it can be our pet.

Hehe. Even if there are ducks there, there's no way I'm bringing one home.

A duck?

As we left I informed the kids we were walking to the carnival. It was a beautiful day, there's a wonderful breeze, and next to no cars on the roads.....perfect for walking.

The complaints spraying from their mouths tells me walks to school need to happen much more often and reminds me of my days walking to and from school dodging dobermans, bulldogs and boxers until I walked through the schoolgate and could finally breathe.

I warn our guest and friend, J, how things work where we live.

People don't stand in lines. You shove until you get to the front and parents help their children do that. After a well deserved scoff at the lack of orderliness, patience and other kind attributes to which I've grown accustomed, our friend assured she would help shove our son to the front of the crowd if deemed necessary so he could have his face painted.

We arrive at the entrance and muddle through the crowd of children who have seemed to have found themselves quite content to stand in the small doorway, pay for our tickets and enter the land of fun.

We stop by a booth filled with aquariums, cages, animal food and a multitude of children gazing at the life scurrying below them. I see 3 cages full of chicks! Cute, fuzzy baby chicks in your choice of the natural yellow, pink or green! Above on a table is a large aquarium filled with goldfish of varying shapes, sizes and colors and directly next to it an aquarium that has baby turtles prancing around it. There were other boxes and cages I hadn't seen yet. My children wanted to see what else they had here. So did I. As we peered into the box I heard a familiar yet unexpected sound. I hadn't recognized what it was yet, but what was that sound? It sounded like, "aaak" but it was rather high pitched and I was sure I had never seen the animal I was about view when I heard it again, "aaak". As I was able to finally see inside the box I recognized the animal sound immediately, "quaaak". Not only one, but probably 25 ducklings were waddling around inside the box in their most noble cuteness. There really were ducks here. Who takes a duck home as a pet? What do you do with it? What does it eat? I would never know. Ducks. Cute little, fuzzy, yellow and black duck babies.



We made our circuit with the big air slide, the airbrush paint tattoos for the boys, dealt with all the kids that had water guns, silly string, etc. they were throwing on each other, shooting at each other and getting everyone else in the way. Then we went back to the animal booth. What would we purchase from the animal booth? Four baby turtles.....that I later find out could grow to be 11" long each. Maybe we will name them after the Ninja Turtles....it is yet to be determined. In the meantime, they are sleeping on some rocks in their aquarium (that we already had from past goldfish) in the boys room, being enjoyed.