Wildlife Weekend

For once, we spent a whole weekend at home. The weather has been beautiful, spring is in the air. So, we were outside most of the time, and the kids developed a new past time — watching the wildlife in our backyard pond. In our pond, we discovered one dead koi fish, one alive koi fish, one or two frogs, and about a dozen salamanders. Henry is terrified of the frog, and he screams at the top of his lungs whenever it hops out of the water. The other kids had no such fears, and they held the frog and caught several salamanders, until James fell into the pond. At that point we decided we should let the animals be and just watch them.

Emily and James also spent a lot of time up in their tree fort. And Henry likes to play in the pebbles just below the fort. He kept a close eye on the frog, who was sitting by the pond and croaking the whole time. We had our first outdoor fire and even roasted Cervelas (fat Swiss hot dogs) and ate dinner outside. It was almost like camping in our own backyard.

On Sunday morning, we went for our first Schwab family bike ride of the Spring. Joe had seen something from the train on his commute that he wanted to try to find. So, we biked north from Münsingen, and when we were nearly to the next town, we saw some large animals grazing in a field. These were not cows, as we are accustomed to seeing in Switzerland. These were buffalo! We stopped and watched them for a while, and tried to read the sign about the buffalo farm. It was all in German, so we aren’t completely sure of the details, but it looked like the original buffalo on the farm were brought to Switzerland from Wisconsin! Okay, so technically they don’t count as “wildlife,” but they were still fun to see.

Other wildlife spotted this weekend: an eagle soaring above us on our bike ride, lots of worms in the garden, and songbirds in every tree. It might not seem like much, but for the kids, its like a zoo in our own back yard.