Of Giant Colons, Shoes, and Chicken Articles

All this over a left foot.

A couple of years ago we were on a family vacation "back East" and we went to a mall. In the mall they had a giant colon. No, really. A giant colon. It was a promotion for some health care company or other and the thing was that kids could climb through the giant colon like a long cave. To make the parents less nervous about their kids traveling through a 20 foot colon, the sides were perforated by dozens of port holes and windows. Our younger daughter was zooming through the colon on her third pass when a man stopped to take pictures of the kids. He showed us his press stuff, identifying him as a photographer for the local paper and asked if it would OK if a picture of our daughter climbing in the 20 foot colon ended up in the paper. We said yes and did whatever else was required. A couple of days later there was a picture in the local paper of the colon and somewhere in the shadowy recesses, a single tennis shoe. Our younger daughter swears it was her shoe and she lorded the fact that she (or her shoe anyway) was in the newspaper over her older sister.

And then there was the time her friend mentioned her in an article on a Bay Area website -- as the name of her pet frog.

Little Sister: 2, Big Sister: 0

So today was our older daughter's chance to even the score, or to at least get on the scoreboard. A member of the San Mateo Chickens group on Yahoo! (Thomas of urbanchickens.net) mentioned that a reporter was looking for families relatively new to Urban Chickens so I contacted her and in a matter of hours had made arrangements for her and a photographer to visit our house the next day. The focus, however, would be on the kids and how they do most of the daily chicken chores.

The photographer showed up at 4pm. The girls ran around and alternated between hiding (shy) and hyper. The kids absolutely loved showing off their chicken knowledge. A good time was had by all, even if my younger daughter forgot to bust out some of her chicken jokes.

And now, we'll wait to see whether any of it makes it into the article.