Breakfast With A Rhinoceros

Early Saturday Ginny and I packed a picnic basket and drove out to the zoo to eat our breakfast with the rhinoceros.

The stupid beast kept standing in the shadow so I had to lightening the photo:

For a cheap date, you can’t beat breakfast at the zoo. We have done this every once in a while for close to 40 years. We are usually the first visitors through the gate and have the zoo pretty much to ourselves for an hour or so.

Jacksonville’s Zoo features not only animals but lavish landscaping and walking paths which lure us deeper and deeper into the exhibits. The zoo is one of the city’s best features.

Here’s a photo of Ginny among the water lilies:

Yes, those are pumpkins reflected in the water behind her. For their Spooktacular promotion, the staff decorated the paths with displays of hundreds of carved pumpkins. These make a great holiday display and after the promotional event, the pumpkins go for animal food:

We lounged a while at an aquarium exhibit where I grew frustrated trying to pose giant fish in the same photo with Ginny. Stupid fish kept moving. The ones you can’t see in the photo are four or five times as large as the ones you can see.

I took a dozen or so photos to come up with just this single one.

The birds in the flight cage weren’t much more cooperative.

After ten or twelve shots, I had to settle for this one:

Yes. Ginny is laughing at my frustration. She hates to see me break out the camera. She claims I get grouchy.

Who?

Me?

All I wanted was a perfect photo.

Is that too much to ask?

Stupid fish!

Stupid birds!

Stupid rhinoceros!

After church Sunday we first pasted a wallpaper border around the ceiling in the bathroom. Balancing on a ladder set up inside the slippery bathtub brings out the best in me (like holding a camera does).

After that chore, we decorated our yard for Halloween.

We use our display to perhaps remind viewers of the encouragement found in the 23^rd Psalm, the passage of Scripture most often read at funerals:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because You, Lord, are with me.

Actually, Ginny and I are not much when it comes to evangelism; however, when anywhere from 30 to 80 people come to our door trick or treating, we see that as an opportunity to perhaps let some of them give a thought to Christ.

So we put together a Ziploc bag packet of goodies, candy, color books and crayons, toys, spider rings, whistles, etc. and always include a couple of religious comic books. We try to make the gifts we hand out into the nicest thing the kids will pick up that night.

Here’s a photo of the contents of a typical treat packet:

To us, the tract proclaiming Christ is the most important item in the packet but we want the kids to take home a fine lot of goodies (I like the dinosaur gliders best). And we want them to associate the Gospel message with a thoroughly fun, pleasant experience.

Maybe on Halloween night I’ll break out the camera and snap some photos.

No. I can’t do that — Ginny says I’m horrifying, a real monster, when I get my hands on the camera.