Poor Mr. Irwin

Monday, September 4, 2006

Sad news of the day: The Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, had been killed by a stingray off the coast of Australia.

In happier tales, it was Labor Day, and Joe would have his birthday celebration that day instead. He had already been greeted home Sunday night with homemade Happy Birthday Joe signs taped to the fan blades in the living room by Frances. And Linnea had attached balloons to the walls with static electricity.

And on Monday, Dad took most of the crew to the air show for the late morning and part of the afternoon while Collette tagged along with Mom and Carrie-Bri once again to fix another Carrie hair-emergency, which had become another frightful shade of orange. Sometime over the course of the afternoon she successfully returned her hair to an acceptable shade of brown.

Following dinner with good barbecued steaks, cheese pasta casserole, fruit, and other tasty things, there was a bunt cake for Joe and eight candles, which he re-lit one and a quarter more times to blow out eighteen altogether. There was money towards his bike from Mom and Dad, Collette and OLeif, and Grandma Snicketts, a rappin’ frog, incense, and a Ferrari hat from the Bentley dealership. Though he was wiped from the weekend, he enjoyed his celebration. And while Dad, OLeif, and Joe watched an action film downstairs, and Rose typed a paper for class, everyone else went up to the schoolyard and the old cabins.

They had already been up there on Sunday evening. Dad had given Rose a brief driving lesson and Dad had also climbed the climbing wall on part of the property. Collette and Rose explored the ancient barn in the woods amid broken glass, a molded piece of wood, horseshoes on the walls, and a handful of old tiles which Linnea washed at home. (OLeif said they looked like vanilla bean ice cream.) There was also a small apple orchard behind the old farm and 1800’s cabins, each tiny tree labeled – likely someone’s Eagle project. Further back, an old stone lay on the ground reading Hartwig and an arrow below it pointing further back into the woods. It had been a beautiful evening, and Rose had also stumbled across a ceramic black cat in the brush. She hid it to perhaps come back at another time and remove it.

So Frances had come Monday evening to bring it away with him. Unfortunately, Dad had given the thumbs down on that idea, and he and Linnea merely sat in on the field and looked at it for awhile before they ran off to play on the grounds. Carrie took pictures of things. And Frances took pictures of Carrie eating the moon. He also eventually tried to smuggle away the black ceramic cat while Linnea managed to get stuck atop the chain-link fence at the end of the school’s property. And Mom, Collette, and Carrie looked over a small wood fence wherein stood a fine old tree and a restored tombstone for two young girls who had died at six and two, Clara and Mary, respectively, in the 1870’s.

As they left, rain clouds drifted across the sunset. Back at the house, they watched Mom’s Antiques Roadshow and History Detectives and Carrie burned Steve Irwin into her pink chipmunk pajama pants, in honor of his passing.