The day with Dad!

Today I am getting to post the update on John and tell you about all the fun we had together.
Before I talk about the days events I want to share a picture and a little story from my time at home while John has been up in Omaha this past week.

This is my flower pot smoker inspired by Alton Brown of "Good Eats" on the Food Network.

I have long enjoyed pulled pork as I grew up in North Carolina, but haven't really had the money to buy a good quality smoker to do this right. I saw this episode "Q" where AB constructed a smoker from large clay pots, and now I finally have one. It works great, I still have some learning to do to really do it right, but for about $100 with all new pieces instead of several hundreds for a Big Green Egg I am willing to figure things out. The Boston Butt turned out really good, and if I want this smoker is big enough to do more than one.

Our night was uneventful and we got to sleep in a little too. Later this morning we went outside to see Jim Fowler, the former partner of Marlin Perkins of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom fame from TV a long time ago. He still works for Mutual of Omaha and came to share some of the animals he still works with, though much younger folks do the handling.

John just loved to watch the strange and silly creatures and we almost got a front row seat on a real chase between predator and prey.

This is a ringtail lemur a native of Madagaskar. It used Jim as a tree and launching platform as he told about one of these ruining Johnny Carson's velvet coat on the Tonight Show.

This is another jungle creature, a nocturnal animal that is called a "night monkey"

Of course also in this picture you see the observant little boy watching the creature hanging upside down and eating.

Here we have a little desert fox, a mouse chasing african creature that is quite interesting to look at.


Finally we saw the most interesting of the animals, a cerval, a long legged small bodied cat that has greater jumping ability than Air Jordan.

First the coiling for the leap.

The cat leaps so high as to take birds out of the air.

As it lands you can see just how long this creature is.

As they were taking the cat back to its pen a small bunny jumped out of the flowerbeds and ran out in front of Jim Fowler's table. The cat spotted it and began to give chase. The handlers and the other adults were quick to handle the cat and chase the bunny away. John had a great time and we also got to see some of our friends who were also there to see the animals.

This afternoon the Childlife folks had another special treat for us. One of the young men that works in their office and a friend of his study magic tricks. They did a lot of card tricks, they also did some fork bending and a few slight of hand tricks. The young men really engaged all the kids and the adults. They even had me handle one of the forks that they twisted and bent with ease. It was a real one, not a flimsy trick piece. They also had John participate in a very well done card trick. They let us keep the card and one of the forks.


All in all we had a pretty good day together, but we miss the mommy and while glad she has the chance to spend time with our friend we are looking forward to seeing her tomorrow.