Weekend Update(s)

Until we have more earth-shatteringly interesting news, this is probably what our blog posts will be: weekend updates.

 

10/15/11

My dad calls it our “apple safari.” 

The Tougas Family Farm in Northboro, MA is known for several things:

• The farm kitchen, where you can buy all things apple—homemade pies, turnovers, honey, butter, fresh pressed cider, fresh cider donuts, caramel apples, apple crisp, the list goes on. 

• The ingenious scheme of filling candy dispensers with goat pellets. All the kiddies clamor for quarters so they can buy handfuls of food to feed the goats that poke their heads through the fences in the petting zoo.

• Their high-density polyethelyne apple bags made of industrial strength plastic that hold 20 lbs of apples. To preserve all farm employees’ sanity, a printed copy of their apple guide is stamped on the back of the bag and answers all stupid tourist questions, including this one: “Which apple should I pick if I want to make a pie?” I’ve never been in an orchard before, so the apple guide was quite handy because I had a lot of stupid tourist questions. The recurring answer to all my questions: Cortland apples are best for baking.

Another perk of the apple guide is that it’s quite educational. It walks you through the five steps of apple picking: 

1) Make eye contact with the apple. Don’t pick it if you think it’s ugly, although a few blemishes won’t hurt you.

2) Grip your apple firmly, lift up, and twist because if you don’t, you’ll hurt the apple’s feelings.

3) Any and all apples that fall from the tree while you’re standing next to the tree are legally and lawfully yours. Put them in your bag.

4) Place the apple gently in your bag, as if it were an egg.

5) If you bite it, you own it. Also, please DON’T throw our fruit at each other, or stuff it in your pockets because that is called stealing.  

4.     The farm is also famous for its pumpkins that grow on trees. 

10/22/11

We went to the Rhode Island Antique Mall because I needed to find a wedding gift for Kirsten, my CUWP friend who is a history teacher and collects antiques. This is the kind of antique store that has display cases full of pincushions and walls of shelves lined with jars full of buttons and other random tidbits. The mall collects from over 130 dealers and people come from all over to find whatever it is they’re looking for, like items to put in their terrariums, or the couple the checkout clerk told us about who recently traveled from Pennsylvania to buy clocks.

I had limited options to choose from, since the gift is being mailed to Provo—glass, obscenely heavy objects, and pretty, but useless items were out. This eliminated 99% of the items in the store. So I had to go with boring, but utilitarian; I settled on a picture frame with a canvas print of Renaissance people of indeterminate gender posing austerely for their portrait. 

I’m guessing they’ll one of two things with the frame: put it in their bathroom or replace the print with this photo of their garden party reception:

As one of the oldest zoos in the country, Roger Williams Park Zoo is supposed to be a major tourist attraction. So we went there. The park grounds are spacious and perfect for picnicking and hosting events like “Puerto Rican Day.”

But zoos in general are uneventful and pathetic. The leopards squeeze themselves into the nooks and crannies of the rocks in the furthest corner of their cages and sit there all day. The wildebeests refuse to give you anything besides a view of their backsides. Occasionally, the bears take a break from hiding in their concrete caves to come out and restlessly pace a length of five feet back and forth.

But, we did see this: a squirrel infiltrating a wallaby cage to steal its food, and a gibbon monkey that got tired of people looking at it so it put a paper bag on its head and stayed like that for the rest of the afternoon.

I suppose it’s admirable that the zoo does lots of outreach and community education. I got excited about this announcement because, along with countless exhibits of animals doing nothing in broad daylight, it gave me an idea for a children’s book about what animals do at night after all the people leave the zoo. My aunt worked in the medical/biological illustration department at Perdue. She could draw the pictures.

NEW! Winter Tadpole Academy | February 22 - 25
Members: $100 / Non-members: $125

2011 theme: "Creatures of the Night"
What happens when we go to sleep? The world changes when the sun goes down and a whole new world of animals wakes up. Campers will explore the special nocturnal characteristics that help these animals survive at night using their own five senses.

Tadpole Academy is a great way to introduce your 4 – 5 year-old to camp at Roger Williams Park Zoo!  Each day is only three hours long and includes stories, crafts, games and Zoo exploration in a safe, small group of only 10 campers per week. 

Due to this small size, campers may only register for a maximum of one week. Each camper receives one complimentary ZooCamp T-shirt that must be worn daily. Note: All Tadpole Academy campers must be completely toilet trained (requiring no assistance in the bathroom)!

Technically, I could qualify because I’m potty trained, and I’m used to wearing ugly t-shirts (remember “Butcamp”?). 

More pumpkins growing on trees as part of the zoo's Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular, an exhibit that involves some 5,000 carved pumpkins accompanied by an inundation of useless pumpkin/pagan ritual trivia.

Jesse and camel posteriors.

Picture this monkey, but with a grocery store-size paper bag on its head.

I'd never seen one of these before. I thought it was a cross between a fox, the Chessire Cat, and a raccoon.

 

Ignore the annoying audio. It's called a red panda. I would like one please. 

 

But maybe not.