Sunday, April 13, 2008

Guest bloggage






Hello everyone, I'm Brad, and I'll be your guest blogger for the next post. Tracey asked me to talk about what we did last Thursday, since she wasn't there. But since I have absolute blogging power, we will now lead a lively discussion about the pros and cons of racial profiling. Ha!!! Just kidding. (hello, is this mic on?)


Anyways, Elise, Ethan and I went to the High Desert Museum to see a wolf exhibit. A husband and wife team from Colorado was in town to do a wolf presentation. They run a wolf sanctuary in Colorado where they take care of abandoned wolves and half wolves left that used to be pets. The tickets were being swooped up fast, so Tracey bought some and was kind enough to let me take the kids. Officially, only kids 7 and up were allowed. Ethan is turning 7 this year, but I doubt we could have passed Abby off as old enough. And Samantha was with a friend. So it was us three.

We were able to use our super special membership priviledges to get in 15 minutes early, and we needed every 15 minutes to get a good seat. We sat on the floor and had to be vigilant, since there were several families trying to sit in front of us. I used my recently acquired "new Brad - no one is messing with me" skills (honed in Italy, another story), and successfully defended our turf. After about 40 minutes of waiting, the show began with an introductory presentation. It was quite interesting. The couple have spent the last 20 or so years taking care of wolves and doing educational tours. Then they brought in the stars of the show:





Maggie, a full-blooded wolf, and Abraham, a dog/wolf mix, were pretty imposing. Very friendly, but people were still a little skittish about getting close to them. After a little while, we saw that they were just softies (albeit with a lot of large teeth) that wanted to sniff everybody. Some people got licks on their faces. Ethan and Elise were able to pet them, but for some reason the wolves were more interested in bigger people.




At the end of the presentation, everyone tried to get the wolves to howl. Abraham was tempted, but unfortunately we weren't good enough:

All in all, it was a pretty cool event. It's not everyday you get to touch a wolf. Ethan saved some wolf fur, and I'm sure they'll remember it for awhile. If these people come to your town, I'd definitely recommend it. You can see their work at http://www.missionwolf.com/index.asp.

Anyways, that's my post. We'll see if Tracey lets me guest blog again. I'm just dying to do a movie review!

10 comments:

Christie said...

Looks like fun. Nice job posting Brad. I liked the howl video, not because of the howling, but because as you watch the one that is closest to the camera you can see that pacing instinct in that wolf. He just went around and around that lady. Looks like a cool day!

Ben said...

Well done! Why don't you start your own blog so that you can post random movie reviews, thoughts, etc? I'm going to do one eventually--I'll likely only update it every week or so.

The Bryan's said...

It looks like fun! We saw a couple of wolfs here in Tempe on the Japanese Matsuri Festival. It was really impressive to see them up close. They were beautiful.

Shawna said...

Welcome to blogging Brad!
The wolves were really cool. That would be something really neat to see. They are beautiful animals.

Shawna said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Great family entertainment. Wish all of my grandkids could come spend the night with us some day during the early summer months. We hear coyotes howl amost every night (not as exciting as wolves). Sometimes it sounds like there are about 10 on the river bed. One night we had a coyote in our back yard really howling up a storm. Fred opened the bedroom door and made a loud noise. He scared him right in the middle of a long howl. It was quite a funny sound to have it abruptly stop. He was gone like a flash. Didn't mean to upstage your first blog Brad. Just thought everyone would enjoy hearing about it.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous is Grandma Whiting. Sorry that I am not of the generation who can be more efficient on technical stuff.

Bill Cook said...

OH BOY! You make me envious!! Wolves are one of my favorite animals. EVERY year I buy a WOLF calendar for my office! Wish I could have been there.

They have some neat things at the High Desert Museum. Isn't that the place we took the tracking instruction when I was there in January?

SJacobus said...

That grey wolf is just beautiful.

Brad I'm thinking you need your own blog. You had so many underlying story possibilities in here that now my curiousity is peaked. What happened in Italy and what movie might we be reviewing. Inquiring minds want to know.

Brad said...

Careful, I don't need much encouragement to get started! Unfortunately, Tracey doesn't appreciate my movie reviews, so I don't think we'll be seeing them here anytime soon. She thinks they're too long. But I know better...