Go Fly a Kite

November - my favorite month of the year. The weather is cooler and drier, and there seems to be at least one festival or fair (sometimes three or four) every weekend. Ron had to work on Saturday but I took advantage of the sunny, breezy weather and drove down to Treasure Island Beach for the Veterans Day Fall Fly Kite Festival. It was a perfect day for kite-flying. I got to see a couple of the show kites being launched, which was very cool. Several spectators brought their own kites or purchased one from the small kite shop set up by the sponsors. The sweetest was a dad showing his little boy how to fly. What a glorious day to be at the beach!

Giraffes and More at Giraffe Ranch

I thought giraffes were fascinating long before I spent two months waiting for April the giraffe to give birth. :-)  When I found out last year that Safari Wilderness had a sister property in Dade City that offered giraffe feedings, I knew we’d have to pay a visit. With the weather finally turning cooler, it seemed like the perfect time to go.

Giraffe Ranch is a family-owned exotic game farm that runs guided tours twice a day. We had signed up for the 11 o’clock Safari Vehicle Tour and were lucky enough to have both owners, Lex and his wife Elena, for our guides. Elena started off the tour with a 10-minute educational talk about the giraffes and other animals at the ranch. Did you know that a giraffe’s neck has seven vertebrae, the same number as a human? It’s just that each vertebra is much longer! Also, animals whose hooves are split into an even number of toes have no top front teeth while animals with an odd number, like zebras and horses, do. That was why we’d be feeding the giraffes but not the zebras. We were much less likely to lose a finger. :-)