Zoo Montana

I was going to be lazy today and not do any writing. I certainly do not have any pictures to show because I left my camera  behind when we headed out for church yesterday. And yet it was such an interesting, serendipitous day, that I decided I did have a few things to share with you. First English Lutheran church turned out to be a good place to start our day. The pastor, Mark Donald, in his sermon spoke on how Christ was not afraid to do the unusual in his ministry. He broke with tradition when he healed a woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Pastor Donald said that one of the best things the ELCA church did was break with tradition and ordained women for the ministry.  After the services John chatted with him and discovered that he was thinking of our niece Kathy when he wrote the sermon. She is an ordained pastor, and now professor of theology, who he came to know at Christikon some twenty years ago. After church we did some shopping and, since we were close to the zoo, decided to stop there before heading home. We usually do not do zoos since there are only a few that can even measure up to the St.Louis Zoo. At Zoo Montana we found a few unusual things. It is advertised as a 72 acre home to north latitude temperate animals.The zoo also has a beautiful flower garden. White chairs were set up in rows here, apparently a wedding had been held there yesterday. It was an absolutely beautiful setting for a wedding. In the education center, filled with small cages for toads, snakes, marmosets and other small animals, there is a preschool classroom.  I must say it is a bit of a stinky place for a classroom, but most unusual! In that room we stopped to watch a keeper play with a mink. That little guy was busy jumping in and out of the keeper's lap, diving into a bucket of ice water, and also zipping through tunnels. In the barn, located on the zoo grounds, we noticed a pigeon sitting on a zoo keeper's shoulder. The young man said the zoo is trying to get the bird to return to the wild but she will not leave the barn. While he was currying combing a horse the pigeon jumped on the horses' back to watch the process. A large section of the zoo was not open to the public because of construction work being done there.We were still able to see a grizzly, a wolf and some river otters.  Somehow we managed to have an enjoyable time at ZooMontana. What is fun about our travels is that there are just some days when we have no idea what is going to happen that day when we head out the door. The unusual can and does happen!