Where Does It Lead?

Where Does It Lead?
Originally uploaded by Corbie.

As a child, one of my favorite pastimes was to go spelunking in the drainage tunnels connecting the city's network of drainage ditches and creeks together. A group of us would gather together bits of cloth and wind them around sticks to create makeshift torches. After setting these ablaze, we would enter the tunnels, with only the quickly dwindling firelight to push back the shadows. I suppose it was dangerous, but we were immortal, so thoughts of misadventure never crossed our minds.
With this in mind, I took a group of students into a short tunnel that leads away from Lake Ranch Reservoir - just for old times sake, and because they asked to go in. It's a lot harder to walk stooped over than it was when I was a kid, and the tunnel led to a drop off, so we had to turn around and go back. Still, it was fun. My job keeps me young.

The kids this week were probably the best informed of any of the groups I've led in the last two years. This meant that the "lesson" part of each class was short, and the experiential part was extended. The discussions went deeper and exploration time was longer. I suppose walking through drainage tunnels counts and learning about watersheds and water supplies, which are things we're supposed to teach. Maybe I'll do things like that more often.

Speaking of doing things more often, I ended up back at the children's museum today so I could borrow back my tarantula and scorpion. The girls went with me and had a great time until it became evident to them that we were about to leave. Willow had quite a meltdown at that point, but with a little help from one of the staff members I was able to get the arachnids and the girls back to the car.

A few hours later I put just about all of my animals in the car and took them all to Livermore for a Halloween party. We all had a great time, and the $150 I got paid for the trip definitely made it worth my while. While there I noticed that once again there were baby cockroaches in the cockroach cage - the day after I'd picked out all of the babies from last week.

Does anybody want some cockroaches?