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Almost as my post went live last night we heard the 'snap' of the live trap in the dining room. We'd caught a mouse. A deer mouse, the first time we've seen one this close and personal. Also: a female deermouse. This invites the question, is it a nursing mother? Like, is there a nest of baby mice somewhere we should let her out to care for?
We couldn't find one, or hear one, and not being confident that what we saw was definitely a nursing deermouse we set the animal out in the (detached) garage where she's welcome to set up. My supposition was that if she does have a nest of babies inside the house, she can make it back to care for them without too much stress, after all.
Still, we failed to prove the babies didn't exist. So several times last night and today we've turned off all sources of noise and just listened, in case we can catch the squeaks of hungry baby mice. Nothing yet, but consider what we discovered yesterday at about the time a post like this went live ...
Back on Dutch Wonderland Exploration Isle. Let's explore a little more.
Good warning sign, if you smoke the pterodactyls will tip you over. I think that's the warning?
Hey, everyone's old buddy the T-Rex, looking ready to start multiball on Jurassic Park!
The whole family of whatever this kind of dinosaur is is startled by how fast I drained out of multiball!
That's the dinosaur trail. So what next to look at ... well, some playground and picnic space and ooh, hey, how about a boat ride?
So here we are, setting out to orbit Exploration Island by boat!
Nothing like the water color in an amusement park's boat ride except the water color in other amusement parks' boat rides.
Here's those dinosaur rumps that I bet are delighting the first kid in the boat to spot them!
Remember that cow statue? Well, there it is.
And those dinosaurs that were standing in front of the cow statue? Here's their rumps.
And so we return to the launch station, with the monorail and the Turnpike track to our left.
The Turnpike ride, meanwhile, proclaims itself Closed and and we suspected it was fibbing. Also I like catching that picture of the kid checking their height against the sign.
Back side of the Turnpike's ride-height sign. The heights are marked by 'jewels' of different kinds, and they let the light shine through the costume jewels in a way that looks pretty good in real life. Photos don't capture the glitteriness of it all.
Trivia: In 1860 New Jersey had a free Black population of 25,336 people out of a total population of 646,699, proportionally twice the size of any other free state. Source: New Jersey: A History of the Garden State, Editors Maxine N Lurie, Richard Veit. Shamefully, New Jersey had disenfranchised Blacks and women in 1807.
Currently Reading: Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek, Glen E Swanson.
