Day 10

Eye of the Tiger

By Zeke Reichert

His name was tiger, but this did not matter to him. He is tiger because he is orange with stripes of brown also because he slinks around everywhere as if he is ready to pounce on pray. During the winter he stays inside, staring outside wishing he could run and play in the snow. But instead he is stuck inside sitting on the back of the couch while his parents watch the winter sports or some sort of soap.

He woke up for his daily routine every day at 6 AM, he walks up to his parent’s door. Meows a few times and walks away. This is just enough for his mom to get out of bed and feed him. As a part of mom’s routine she gets the newspaper every morning so this is the orange Maine coon’s chance. He gets down low and pounces straight out the door onto the porch evading mom at all costs. As he continues to run away from the house into the cold white environment he rolls over and flops into the untouched snow and watches as his mother gives up on getting him back in the house. She knew he would want back in after a few hours.

The outdoors are great the orange fuzz ball in the snow is thinking, but the outdoors during the winter aren’t as friendly as during the summer. There are no mice active, larger predators are more active and are its cold! And being an indoor cat his fur is much thinner than the other cats in nature. But he ventures on, leaving a trail of small paw prints in the freshly laid white dust. Tiger is off to his favorite place it go during the summer, an old nook of trees with lots of leaves to lay in.

Tiger safely arrives to his destination and finds his dry loft of leaves in one of the old sugar maple trees. He makes himself comfortable, rotating several times before actually laying down and going to sleep. The orange feline sleeps for multiple hours disregarding the cold until he is awoken to the sound of a branch snapping in the wind. There is a small flurry going on around him snow is coming down at a faster rate than before, his tracks are covered up and his sense of direction is now blurred and the large cat does not know where to go to get back home, and the fact that he is cold and hungry does not help.

He starts his venture out of the fort and bunny hops through the snow to the nearest house which he recognizes as one that gives him food when he comes up during the summer. He begs at the door and puts his face up to the window where the old woman sees him and lets him in. This is a nice change compare to the cold that awaits him outside but this is not his house nor is this his owner so he sits and waits at the door to go back outside. The old woman walks back into the room with warm milk and wet food. Tiger thinks this is the best meal I have had in all of my life as he wolfs down all of the food and walks out the door into the dark cold outside air. The orange beast now follows the trail of houses recalling his memory of where he is and finally comes to his house at the corner of the line of houses. He walks up to the front door of his house and yowls for his family which soon after open the door to let the cold tired but well fed kitty in the door. Tiger finally gets to walk over to warm fireplace and lay down, arms stretched and fall asleep for the rest of the night until another adventure comes…

Day 8

 To make a lake it takes water, rocks and wildlife. But this can be replaced with pebbles if rocks are not of abundance. Next you must combine these to form a functional lake. But to make it a complete lake you must add a sprinkle of your favorite bird calls and a pinch of the best water noises. Now if your environment is supportive of a diverse set of animals and is not polluted congratulations, you have created a lake worth tubing, swimming and canoeing in!

Here is a picture of yesterdays canoeing: 

Day 7

A vignette is a short piece of writing that is under 800 words that can be written in poem, short story or narrative from. We wrote our vignettes on wildlife we saw at the Cox Arboretum, but first we wrote one on a prompt the Ms. Cindric gave us as a practice.

The cold water is brushing across me

Brothers and sisters surround me in the silence

The green trees and red bushes look down on me

I am solid and stout, but I like that

A crawfish lives under me and squirrels stand on top of me

I am a rock solid and blank of emotion

Here is a picture of what I was writing about.

The humans drop what I eat

They neglect to clean my home

What they call trash I call breakfast

I am the cleanup crew

When you drop bread crumbs it gives me life

My brown stripes help me hide from you

I am the safest of them all as you do not look at me

Brothers and sisters surround me, brilliant with color

But I say colors and sizes do not separate us

We are who we are, and I.

I am proud to be a ground feeding sparrow

Day 6

Today my class and I went to one of the Dayton metro parks were we went kayaking and hiking.

When we first arrived we met our guides, in the freezing cold! And this is when the groups separated into a hiking group and kayaking as there aren’t enough space for all of us to be out on the water at the same time. My group of about five went into the trails of the park first and learned about the plants around the area. The woman leading us told us about all of the plants that we don’t want in our wildlife because they were brought from other places and they are taking over our land. We also learned about how to identify poison ivy, leaves of three, leave it be and we learned about the red stem ion the bottom. Then we learned really do anything about the plants because the environment will figure out what to do. But there was one thing we learned that wasn’t on her list. How to be freezing at the beginning of June! It’s almost summer and the outdoor temperature was almost in the 40’s and the dew dripping of the grass onto your foot made it even worse!

Finally after a several hour hike we got to the part everyone in my group was looking forward too. Kayaking… Beforehand we ate lunch at the tables and put or telephones in a safe place as to not make them wet. We walked over to the docks where the instructors told us how to do all of the safety things and how to use the paddles correctly. Then we got into our kayaks, mine was red with a black paddle set. Once on the water we spent a few minutes learning how to use the boat and go in the directions we wanted. For about half of the time mine kept spinning out which I soon learned was caused by a rudder that can be put down to fix that problem! But after that it was all smooth sailing in the green murky water. 

Here is a picture of my journey yesterday!

Day 5

My partner and I decided that we would go to Mtd Yosemite during the summer and that it would be a weeklong trip.

Here is the list of materials that we would require on our trip

Duct tape, water bottle, flint and steel, matches, hiking tent, mallet, asprin, first aid, sleeping bag, pot and pan, water filter, cellphone, rain poncho, compass, swiss army knife, mac and cheese, eating utensils, a change of clothes, soap bar and dried food. Our total weight ended up around 78 LBS which means that it is not a lightweight backpack to move around.

To get our pack to the weight that we have here we thought that we brought only things that were a necessity, but considering some other groups had packs were only 50 LBS my group must not have truly brought necessities. We also thought that we were getting light weight items to put into our pack so this means we either didn’t separate enough stuff or the stuff we had was too heavy.

Day 4

You are in your house. Sitting at the dinner table. Around you is your family, silver wear arranged around the table in the positions of your family members. Food is in the center. Peas, steak, mashed potatoes and gravy steam in the center of the table.  The family is about to start eating. They put their hands together and say grace… finally the tipping point as everyone takes their first bite they all go for the same thing, the steak. As I put my first piece of the freshly grilled meat in my mouth I can feel it melt around my taste buds. It is flavourful with spices and rubs from the propane grill. The potatoes still steaming with heat and moister waiting for you taunting you with all of their buttery goodness, you dig in and take a large spoonful of the fluffy cloud like material. This marshmallow material is what everyone looks forward too when it is done right you think as you take a bite and the golden white clouds dissipate into your mouth a throat as you swallow the large spoonful. But then the most dreaded part of your plate. The peas… you sit and stare at them and think “they look like old green person faces”. As you curl up your nose towards them you take the biggest bite possible to try and get rid of them and down it goes. But then when you look back there is still the same amount of them! Peas are the grossest thing in any dinner, besides zucchini. But you tread through the green mishmash of soldiers and wake up… Wait. It was just a dream! None of those evil things touched me! But I didn’t get the steak either you think as you sit waiting to arrive at your destination in the heavy city traffic.

Today we went to aulwood and my group learned about birds, plants and uses for medicinal plants. First we were introduced to the environments we would be walking through and then we walked with binoculars to find different types of birds in the environments. The coolest thing that I learned today was about how the birds have a blue luminescent glow in their feathers to make it dark in the light and blue in the shade.

Day 3

First when we got to Cox Arboretum we went on a hunt for 5 different types of tree's, here are our finding's.

First we have a Blue Spruce.

Next we have a Maple.

Next is an Austrian Pine.

Next is a Long Leave Pine.

And finally we have an oak tree.

After our tree adventure we were allowed to walk around the park and find things that we found interesting. Me and my group of friends looked around the trails and walked around the majority of the park. The most interesting thing I saw today was the butterfly room (which has not been put into action yet unfortunately. Inside this room there was all kinds of vivid beautiful plants that butterfly's would like.