The Natural Science Center

Since the weather was pretty nice today, and we (or more specifically, me) were itching to get out of the house, we took Ella on the first of what I'm sure will be many trips to the Natural Science Center. We made the mistake of going a little too close to nap time, so there was some periodic grumpiness, but overall, we had a nice visit.

They have completely redone the "animal discovery" (read: mini-zoo) area since the last time we were there, and I was impressed with it! It all looks really nice, and there's a decent variety of animals there.

We saw maned wolves, tortoises (which came RIGHT up to you...and they were huge!), and a tiger, amongst others.

As we were walking down the path to the tiger enclosure, we could see him pacing back and forth in front of the fence. Suddenly, he let our a roar, and jumped and lunged at the fence -- holy crap! The gibbons up the hill went into a screeching fit. It was pretty impressive -- and intimidating. I couldn't get a really good picture of him, because he was constantly on the move.

Piggy-tails!

Veggies live in the fridge.

We'd had this weird smell going on in the pantry for a few weeks. It was getting worse and worse over time, to the point that it would smack you in the face as soon as you opened the door, and it would linger after the door had been shut. You could even smell it in the living room. It was RANK.

Jon and I both had poked around in there a bit, and hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. We typically don't keep anything really perishable in there, so as the smell progressed, I began to really fear that there might be SOMETHING in there that I didn't want to see. Like something dead.

Today, it was SO bad that we decided start taking stuff out to try and find the culprit. Logic said to start at the bottom shelf, so Jon pulled everything out. Nothing down there but onion skins. Certainly not the source of the stench.

Next shelf up -- nothing. I was thinking that maybe something had gotten stuck towards the back, but we weren't finding anything.

The next shelf was the one we use most often, with the bulk of our canned goods. We occasionally keep some potatoes and garlic in there as well, but they go pretty fast. Jon rustled around for a minute -- I wasn't really expecting him to find anything on that shelf.

Suddenly, I hear Jon say, "Eww...we have a winner!". He pulled out a bag with the remains of what appeared to be 3 red onions. Oh, it was rancid. I have no idea how long they had been in there, or even WHY they were in there to begin with!

Seriously repugnant.

So, now I'll be taking care to make sure that any vegetables brought into the house go into the fridge. Maybe even the ones that don't even need to be in there. Just to be safe.