Travel reports

Middle Daughter is used to noise, but not the noise of her new host family in Dakar, Senegal. She met them last night, and knows 5 names out of the fifteen or so going in and out. She also has not figured out who is an in-law, a younger child or an older grandchild. She sounded a little dazed. We tried calling the number she gave us, but the message said it was disconnected

About Red Oak: It's in North Aurora, IL, along the east bank of the Fox River. I hear that Jim the manager is still there after 20-odd years. I used to take Eldest Son and Eldest Daughter to see the six foot bull snake and the raptors waiting for their wings to heal. The beehive's glass case is built into the wall, and Eldest Daughter always looked for the queen bee. Middle daughter wouldn't remember it, and the younger ones have never been there.

Our apartment complex was then at the edge of civilization. We took plaster casts of deer tracks and turned in some of our discoveries, such as a fox skull, to Red Oak. The lot was home to half a million caterpillars. I once had to chase a muskrat out of the hall; the door didn't close properly until after the muskrat had wandered in, and he was not happy. Right after we moved back to Wisconsin, the bulldozers came through. The Pick-your-own-raspberry farm with its petting zoo and ice cream shop, our half million caterpillars, and a lot of Illinois countryside disappeared in a hurry.

Red Oak's trails were short enough for toddlers to handle but long enough for them to find something interesting. There are now longer trails and a bike path.

Hello Crow lived in an old grain bin, just off the trail around the bend from the nature center. People had been greeting him with "hello" for years, and so he would always hop to the edge and croak, "'Ello, 'ello, 'ello." He was a very friendly bird. One day we didn't see him and I asked Vince, the assistant at the time, where Hello Crow was. Vince said blandly, "Hello Crow died the other day." Later, with the kids out of earshot, he told me that some teenagers had stabbed the bird when he came up to greet them.

The nature center now has a lobby, an auditorium, and office space. The office space Jim used to use is now serving its proper function as a storage closet. The old raptor room has reptiles and amphibians, including a delightful fat salamander and a huge Florida king snake. The bees and the play-with-it table, with deer antlers and fox skulls and snake skins, is the same as before, except for new paint. I'm glad we took the detour.

Mrs. James