Rio Grande Valley Livestock show

Monday was a very long day for us.  It started out fairly early for us.  Mary Jo, my sister-in-law had a rehearsal meeting with her dulcimer club and suggested I come along, since Benson State Park was on the way and perhaps I would enjoy some birding there.  Wayne and John decided to join me on that excursion.  When we arrived at the park we were greeted by the sight of two altamira orioles bathing in a puddle of water.  A brown thrasher walked nonchalantly in front of us, and I espied a titmouse hanging out on the window ledge of the nature center.  The din of the birds was deafening but wonderful.  I could pick out the cheer-cheer of cardinals, the konk-la-reee of the red-winged blackbirds, as well as the signature song kis-ka-dee of the bird so named.  The ranger at the park pointed out some hiking trails on a map for us, as well as where to find the best feeding station for birding.  In that area we also saw green jays, warblers and woodpeckers.  Later, after a two hour hike, we then picked up Mary Jo and headed to the livestock show.  You would think we would see a rodeo at a livestock show, but that was not on the agenda for the day.  We saw several other interesting shows instead.  The first one I saw was the Kachunga and Alligator show.  Castillo and his sidekick, Bert Lucas handled an alligator from the swamps of  Florida with surprising ease.  Castillo encouraged a young girl from the audience to come on stage to pet the animal and even to sit on him, which she did with amazing aplomb.  Castillo held the tail of the alligator so it would not whip around.

 Lucas also placed his hand inside the creature's mouth, which he said he could do because the alligator's eyes are on top of his head and he was unable to see Lucas' hand.  The next show we was the Craz E.Crew Stunt Team.  The teams is comprised of young men, professional performers who are always pushing to go bigger, faster, and higher on skate boards and bicycles.  Reportedly they have gone as high as 18 feet.

Wow, I was surprised that I was able to capture the action on my camera!  The team has over 18 years of experience and travels all over the world with their shows.  Our next entertainment was the Catherine Hickland's Hilarious Comedy Hypnosis show.  She is one of  very few females in the field of hypnotism.  With her melodious soothing voice she put 18 people under, as you can see in the picture below.

After she got them into a sleep state she was able do get them to do whatever she commanded.  She had them acting like James Bond, also playing imaginary instruments and dancing.  It was very funny when she  had them listening to music out of their shoes!  I could understand why only young people volunteered to undergo hypnosis-  no adult would be that trusting and would be concerned how they acted in a dream-like state.  Unfortunately John and I did not see the end of that show because we wanted to see the greased pig competition.   Teen-age girls (from local high schools) tried to capture slicked-up piglets in large arena.  The show was over in at least 5 minutes- the girls ran very fast, and the small pigs even faster.  I felt sorry for the last pig still running at the end.  A least five girls fell one him, but only one was able to hold onto him.  That was our day, we had seen and experienced a lot in about 12 hours;  from singing birds to squealing piglets.  We were certainly four very tired but happy senior citizens!