Pooping frogs and hissing geese

We had an adventuresome day with a lot of animal encounters. We started this morning in a meadow that rivals the best of Yosemite. We'd heard that the meadow was hopping with frogs this time of the year and that was an understatement. As we walked, frogs no bigger than a little kid's thumb hopped around our feet. The boys wanted to hold them but I had to grab one first. YUK. Actually, they were so little you couldn't even feel them. They were all heading for the shrinking pool of water in the middle of the meadow -- the last of the snow runoff from last winter. After Zach held his first one, it hopped off his hand and left behind what Zach said was "frog pooh, so gross." I doubt it was frog pooh, but it was black and it wasn't there before the frog so who knows. We laughed about that all day.

In another part of the meadow, the frogs disappeared and, I believe, flying grasshoppers filled the air. Ben was walking in front of me and he stopped and held out his arms. They were thick. Two pelicans performed above us, flying in perfect formation, just before the last hint of the moon disolved into the blue sky. This meadow is one of my most favorite places -- more so after today. The boys climbed on top and around huge boulders. Zach decided we'd "play family" so he claimed the biggest boulder as his house. Ben claimed the next boulder as his and I took the third. Zach was insistent we all have our own, but Ben invited me to his house quite often. When I settled into mine, the dogs followed and soon the boys were there, too. Then, Zach claimed another boulder so he'd have two houses. So Ben claimed another one, too, but thought better of it: "All of these are my houses," he said, surveying his sea of 20 houses (boulders) in the valley below. His face held the pose of a king at the edge of his kingdom. Of course, this magical time disintigrated into a whine fest before we made it back to the car. But of course it would. They're 5-year-olds.

The hissing geese were at the lake near Tahoe Donner. Ben had Cheetos on the beach. I was in the lake. Ben gave the geese Cheetos. Then Zach did. Then the geese roared up for more, hissing. I was out of the lake, fast, but the geese hissed at me, too. Love those geese! They do clean up the beach. We ceased eating Cheetos and the geese moved on.