Clay Animals...and, Have I Mentioned The Rain?!?

I taught art in Little Q's fourth grade class again yesterday. When we were making and studying pinch pots last month the kids were excited by the photos of Indian fetishes in the reference books I'd brought and wanted to try to make their own clay animal spirits this go-round. After a fun and energetic hour and a half, there were a lot of snakes (ha!) and other extremely creative animal creations in clay. I had made the kids sketch out their ideas before starting to work with the clay and some of the sketches they came up with were wild!

Here are two of my favorites - an owl and a tarantula...check out the spelling of crocodile on the paper these guys are sitting on.

We're working on 6 straight days of rain and snow, and it's hard not to let it impact everything we do. It's not that we aren't used to the wet or cold, it's just that it is well past when we traditionally have sun and milder temperatures and it's delaying all of the pre-summer activities that normally give us some hope of longer days, bright sunshine, and iced tea on the patio.

Matt has been put on alert and has to carry his pager around in his infrequent off-hours in case the flooding gets any worse and forces evacutions. Mudslides and landslides have been closing the roads all over the state and yesterday morning on my way to work, there were signs everywhere announcing that the standing water on the freeway was deep enough it was causing serious accidents. All of this is made more concerning becuase there is still a significant amount of unmelted snow in the mountains that will have to go somewhere when the weather does warm up. Ground water is already at 180% of capacity.

All of our animals are sick of the rain and the mud, with the exception of Herbie. If anything, the rain has made him more playful (if that's possible). He wanders around from puddle to puddle, tugging on the hems of our coats or pecking at the top of our boots, tail wagging, wanting us to follow and play.

Out of the blue, several of our heritage turkey hens have turned broody. Three of them are actually both competitively and cooperatively sitting a huge clutch of eggs inside the barn. They either team-sit or take turns sitting while the others free-range to eat and drink. Yesterday morning, I surprised one that was sleeping on the clutch with her head tucked.

Matt made the mistake of trying to be helpful this morning and a normally gentle and tolerant hen hissed and pecked him hard enough to leave a bruise through his glove. We'll see how this turns out, since we've never successfully had turkeys hatch their own eggs before.

And in other news, have I mentioned the rain?