Too nice to slave over a hot stove
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 April 2007 20:57:40
This was my decision as we arrived home from church on Sunday. So lunch was scrapped and we set off on an alternative Easter hunt... though not for chocolate eggs. Amazon World is a local attraction which we love, being based on a Rainforest conservation theme and with loads of free-flying birds and well-cared-for animals amongst the most amazing of plants in a greenhouse complex which you can walk around as though in the middle of the Rainforest - all the time learning about the horrors of deforestation. They decided against doing an Easter Egg hunt because of the environmental impact of forests being cut down to grow cocoa beans for chocolate and the additional implications of so much foil and packaging being discarded onto landfill sites. So their hunt was slightly different.
The children were told there'd been a disaster at Amazon World and that loads of recycleable "rubbish" had been littered around. There was a competition for children to count how many items they could find as they went around. Smudgelet got really into it - It was impossible to get through to him that the challenge did not include random bits of litter dropped by visitors (amazing though it was to think that anyone would drop litter there) and we also suddenly realised that some of the things that he'd counted were actually part of the electrics or feeders etc. So in the end we just had to guess. But it was quite a meaningful lesson regardless.
The statistics we read there were mind-blowing. The population of the world, or rather of the "developed" part of the world, is mad in the degree of mindless damage done to the environment every day.
I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite photos from the day. The little ground-level birds with the tuft are a type of partridge - can't remember the name, alas - who follow each other round everywhere. There were loads of pairs there (they mate for life) and they were absolutely lovely, and so tame they almost walked over your feet at times, but as soon as the camera went anywhere near pointing in their direction they were off!
And this one's just for Jack the Lass :D
