The computer is being extra slow tonight. I'm sure a species became extinct somewhere in the world during the time it took to load the blogger page. That's sad in many ways.

Speaking of extinction, the deer population at Sanborn Park is one individual closer to it. There was a dead deer out in front of the visitor center this morning. It didn't look like it had been attacked - it was just sort of laying there with its head thrown back and its eyes half open. The ranger came and removed it before the kids arrived.
This week, I have nine campers, although so far only eight have shown up at the same time. There seems to be some kind of illness going around again. One of the kids is sort of surly and fed up with being shipped off to various camps every week for the whole summer. Another one is really intelligent, and reads Scientific American when he isn't tackling complicated calculus problems (or so he says). He does seem to know a lot of things that I'm surprised an elementary school kid knows. He's also an athiest and hates the president, which is fun. As a whole, this group seems to like discussing politics, which I allow as long as it doesn't stray too far from the environmental issues we're studying. Now if I can just keep the surly kid from needling the smart one and making him shout, maybe we'll make it through the week with our collective sanity intact.
At the end of camp, we found half a rat. A Yellowjacket had bellied up to the open end and was feasting away. Some of the kids thought this was interesting...

It's hot.