Monday,April 7~Zoo & Thurman's

Sara, Matt & Evie came up from Cincinnati for a visit this past weekend.  Evie has become quite the little conversationalist and is ever so polite using her "thank yous" and "er welcome".  She still has to be reminded sometimes about her "pleases" as her asking often comes out as a demand but that is to be expected of most 2-18 year olds!  Saturday we spent some time at the zoo.  It was a little cold so we stayed on the west side of the zoo with the fishes, snakes and manatees.  We wanted to walk through the walk-about with the kangaroos but it was closed.  We had lunch at the Old Bag of Nails Pub in Powell.

Sunday I was bad and skipped church and we drove over to German Village and ate at Thurman's.  They hosted Man vs Food in March and Matt wanted to try one of their gourmet burgers.  It was fortunate that we got there at 11 when they opened because we got the last table.  The service was ok but we were there nearly an hour before our food came out and when we left there was a huge line of people waiting.  The burgers were good and Andy liked the deep fried portabella mushrooms.  We ordered a basket of onion straws that were good but nothing like the ones at The Counter in Honolulu.  We decided that it was great for our first time visit but probably not high on our "can't wait to go back" list.  We stopped at the Scioto Audubon Park on the way home and walked some of the paths around the visitor's center and took the walk across the wetlands to the play area.  It was such a pleasant afternoon and I could almost believe that spring is nearly here to stay.

Andy's bacon, cheese burger

Sara and I split the Western Burger (cheddar cheese, bacon & BBQ sauce)

We've also been watching the wood ducks in the creek as they search for that perfect hole in a tree to lay their eggs.  I'm hoping it is somewhere close so I can watch them through my spotting scope that I got for Christmas.  We saw the female again this morning.  Yesterday it was the pair.  I think they are the prettiest ducks that we have here in Ohio.

The male is beautifully colored with iridescent blues, purples and greens outlined in white with red eyes

The female is buff brown and gray with a distinct white eye ring

These ducks are easy to identify by their sounds.  Unlike the quacking of other ducks, wood ducks squeal or squeak making a woo-eek, woo-eek sound as they fly

Wood ducks are perching ducks with sharp toes on their webbed feet that can grasp tree limbs enabling them to land in trees.  Mallards on the other hand are dabbling ducks that tend to look for food near the edges of ponds by dabbing their heads under water.
There are also diving ducks...but that is information for another day!!