Wolf Sanctuary Field Trip

Our family day last week saw us trekking across Lancaster County to the Wolf Sanctuary of PA in Litizt.  Our home school group had organized a field trip, and about twenty of us showed up for a very chilly tour of a pretty unique place. They have the wolves divided up into different packs according to who gets along.  While we were there we saw a few "friendly" scuffles among the packs, and these still looked scary when you aren't used to them.

The girls especially liked the all-sanctuary howl we heard. One alpha male will start to howl, and then each pack will join in over the course of a minute or two, until all 44 wolves are wailing away.  We all chose our favorite wolf; mine was the peace-loving Geronimo. He is part of the largest pack but avoids all conflict by staying out of the huddles.  Then he steals the others' buried food when they are sleeping.  I don't condone that last part, but at least he doesn't bite anyone.

These wolves are mostly rescues or the pups of rescues.  Our tour guide said they had just lost the grandson of the *Dances with Wolves* wolf to old age recently.  I think the thesis of the tour was "wolves do not make good pets unless you want to seriously annoy your neighbors and endanger your family." Hunters donate their kills to feed the wolves, and these carnivores crunch up the whole deer, bones and all, and just leave the hide and the hooves.

That was a busy day, because we also had to pack for Pearl's journey with her daddy to Boston.  They flew out early Friday morning for a karate event and to visit friends.  I'm told it was nonstop play with the three other little girls up in Massachusetts, complete with a talent show (here is Pearl showing a one step). 

Sapphire also benefited from a whole weekend of grandparent attention. I picked her up Sunday night. We had a peaceful snow day on Monday. I made a five foot snow man for the girls, but since Sapphire gets cold so quickly, I was pretty much on my own. Sapphire and I spent part of our quiet afternoons practicing her letters--and I wish you could hear the cute way she talks about "my Letters." This book and shapes she's using were a neat find at our local library: How to Build an A.

In the quiet of a half-empty house, I worked on curtains for the room Ruby shares with Sapphire. I've been putting off replacing these curtains since we moved in 9.5 years ago. Now I want some serious darkness to keep those little girls asleep past 6am when June rolls around.  This required panels with blackout fabric backing.  My plan is to discreetly place Velcro on the sill edges to really block the light. The sewing machine started acting up before I could finish the final window.