City Wildlife

I chaperoned a field trip for Finn's class today. To be clear, I am not new to the field trip world; I have been to the Pumpkin Patch, The Federal Reserve Bank, and a the Planetarium among others. Today's field trip, however, goes down as the strangest (in the best way) I have been on to date. Normally, on field trips, gossipy parents follow the bus in a trail of minivans making frequent stops for coffee...not so today...today we rode the bus.

The children are studying Wildlife in the City as part of their reading curriculum and this potpourri style adventure landed the kids and a bunch of queasy parents at our first of many stops...the North Park Nature Center. We saw a deer and a turtle, a kid fell in the pond and several discovered the true nature of thorns. Time to move on.

From the nature center we all got back on the bus, counted the kids (27) and headed to Humbolt Park to have lunch in a gymnasium. We looked at a pond and got back on the bus, counted the kids (28...what? Recount 27...cool.) and headed on our way.

We ended up at the Daley Center to take in the Picasso sculpture and make careful note of pigeons in their natural habitat. The center is preparing for a big holiday event. As a result the sculpture was pretty much inaccessible and the children naturally turned their attention to chasing the pigeons. The birds didn't seem too disturbed, as city wildlife of all kinds are a tough and unflappable breed. Lesson learned?

Yep, you guessed it, time to get back on the bus (25...26...27 kids, phew) and head over to the Serious Tower. The kids looked at it from across the street and no, we did not make note of wildlife, pigeons or otherwise; the chaperons were caffeine crashing...big time. The children oohed and ahhed and after posing for a group picture got back on the bus...all twenty something of them.

I asked the bus driver if that was the last stop and he said, "I sure hope so!"

We were back to school at 2:20pm with just enough time for several of us to schlep ourselves into our security blanket of a minivan and pick up skim lattes from the Buzz Cafe! We were back just in time to pick up the kids who had nothing short of a fabulous day ferreting out wildlife in the city!