Gramma in animal- land

I began this adventure yesterday when I ran into a mermaiden.  Actually I waited outside her shell while she encrusted her eyes in shiny pink glitter that overflowed onto her long thick eyelashes. Afterwards I spent the night in Shi-Tzu castle well guarded by two little lion dogs.

Then this morning I was on my way down the interstate when a most charming rabbit popped up. He ran out from behind an overpass, stopped dead and stared me straight in the eye. It was such a direct look, so knowing, so beautiful and it broke my heart when I hit him, but the moment was too fast, too startling to do anything else.

I had barely recovered from this tragedy when four deer walked out into the road, a mother and three almost grown fawns. These fared much better than my poor rabbit and I"m sure they are now happily munching grass in some forested field.

Soon I saw a field undulating and for a moment I thought my blood pressure had gone awry again, but it turned out to be hundreds (maybe thousands) of Canadian and Snow geese eating something off the ground.

Then I passed a wren farm, or perhaps they call them colonies. Row after row of wren houses on poles, each with room for several families at once.

I was so amazed at this collection of creatures that included hawks and crows and long horned steers, that when I saw what appeared to be a wildebeast, then an ostrich and a zebra, I knew I was on the wrong continent and I wondered at my sanity! Shortly after that I saw a sign that said Tennessee Safari Park.

I saw other signs too. Memory Lane, One finger road and a huge old Buffet whose sign said, Hours: Open to Close!

I stopped at a rest area that was on The Trail of Tears and one where a famous Civil War battle was fought . . .

In nearly eleven hours I drove from the cornfields of Illinois through the wonderland of western Tennessee and into Big Al territory in Tuscaloosa where I was met by a beautiful princess, Maddison the golden lab!