I've been working a piece on a couple with two kids, one a toddler one almost a year, with the husband staying home and the wife on deployment to Afghanistan. She's been pumping and sending milk to him for five months via DHL. From Afghanistan! That's pretty cool.

No raise yet, but I did get to write about breastfeeding. It's a sortof compensation. Sortof.

I took the family to our nature center recently. It was an eye-opening and horrifying experience for me. The kids loved it - my oldest spent a lot of time with the rattlesnakes and my youngest, wrapped to my chest, goobled at the Rio Grande cichlids until he fell asleep. My husband enjoyed most of it until his cousin called with stupid family drama that he can't do anything about anyway.

Anyway, what got me was the skunk. A few months ago I read Derrick Jensen's "Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos" in The Sun magazine. An insightful little piece, Jensen says:

"Unfortunately most of us by now have been to enough zoos to be familiar with the archetype of the creature who has been driven insane by confinement: the bear pacing a precise rectangle; the ostrich incessantly clapping his bill; the elephants rhythmically swaying."

The skunk paced, ran a precise triangle of insanity for what seemed like forever. I imagine that she eventually gets tired and chills out. But the triangle resumes, and with it diminishes her hope of normalcy.

They housed two bobcats as well in a comparatively small cage in the back. They had stuff to play with, a house to hang out in, but no flora and no live prey. When the guy went in to change their water and clean their poop, he poked the broom at the female. She hissed and batted at the broom. I thought she'd be better served to claw at his head.

Also enclosed were three ringtails, numerous herps and chirps, fish, several dead and stuffed animals, and one crazy rock squirrel.

The animals were all likely rescues or dumps. I still think there's a better way to help them along.

I spent some time explaining to my oldest son the expanse of natural habitat for bobcats, ringtails, fish, etc. Maybe he'll think about it. He's a pretty smart kid, but it may be too early to fully instill a sense of responsibility. His father's girlfriend has three birdies she keeps in a relatively small cage in their house. This woman, a self-described animal lover, talks to geese that bite her hands (because, she says, she can make them understand and they'll let her pet them, oh yes they will), and pets random animals she encounters (without asking permission, I might add), and thinks that my youngest son is "that thing making weird noises in the corner over there," keeps these birdies together and lauds the benefit of animal keeping. I asked her what she thinks the birds might want. She suggested that it's more important what they need rather than what they want.

I'm a pretty easy going person, regardless of how pissed off I get at some people/actions/ideas. I allow for a lot of child self-governing and have found that through the miracle of discussion rather than strict rules, the oldest kid's turned out pretty good.

Yesterday we discussed the benefits of recycling, reusing, and buying or obtaining things such as clothes and bikes secondhand for our use, then passing them along to someone else. My ex seems to think this is "trashy" or whatnot.

Moral of the story: read Jensen's piece, buy a copy of The Sun, I'm unapologetically fierce and angry (and trashy), and zoos suck ass.