Hi! This is Nanea! Trudy thought the Islandshire Gazette readers would like to hear all about my “dream vacation” at The Polynesian Resort in Florida. So, each evening before bed, I wrote in my Journal about the fun things we’d done during the day. Once Benny and I got home to our lagoon house on Islandshire, Trudy took my journal and Sarah’s photos, with the idea of publishing our memories in installments over the next week or so. Of course, the photos don’t really show you how beautiful everything was, but I hope you enjoy hearing about our trip. There was something for both of us to see all the time, and we must have walked a million miles. (Ha ha. Not really. That’s an exaggeration. Felt like it some days, though.) But the souvenirs . . . oh, my . . . Benny says to get on with the photos before I spoil something. Aloha!
(This is us in our stopover pad at GreatGrammy’s. Ignore Baby Yoda. He was a stowaway and always likes to hog the camera time. He is definitely not going with us on our “dream vacation”! Say good-by, Grogu!)
We’ve arrived at GreatGrammy’s house in Viera, Florida! The flight was fine, but the airline had forgotten to leave a seat for Benny and me, so we slept in our skyline bag the whole way. (They refunded our money, of course.) Boy, this sure is a nice place to stay until we head to the Polynesian Resort! GreatGrammy is funny, too. She doesn’t like to have too many visitors at once, so we stay quietly in our room. Benny says I don’t have to whisper, because she won’t hear us anyway. The adults have to holler real loudly so GreatGrammy can hear them, unless she puts these little machines in her ears. I think she might need new machines.
We’re still as quiet as we can be, though, and don’t take up much space in the room we share with Sarah and Auntie. There are lots of drawers for everyone’s things, but Sarah and Auntie keep our stuff packed in our travel bag. Our things are small and might be too easily lost. I suspect it might have something to do with Shadow, GreatGrammy’s cat. But she stays on the other side of this big house and never comes in our room. Better to be safe than sorry, though, because we don’t want GreatGrammy’s kitty to choke on our things. Besides, I didn’t bring anything I care to lose.
The birds are very different here. Some of them are larger than life and make noise that even GreatGrammy can hear without her little machines. GreatGrammy lives on a lake, and Grammy feeds corn and whole peanuts to the local wildlife when she gets here. It brings a lot of birds and squirrels to the patio and lake edge, and we’re going to spend a lot of our “down time” watching the birds. Auntie says she’s going to use her new video recorder to film the comings and goings of the wildlife, since she and Sarah have been feeding them since they were little girls and would like to remember them like this.
One Limpkin comes every morning at sunrise, looking for the apple snails in the lake. It’s like having a rooster! Benny doesn’t like the loud, screaming noise it makes so early in the morning, but I don’t mind much. It’s so fun to watch as Mr Limpkin digs around the lake bottom looking for the snails, and he looks like he’s standing on stilts! Auntie goes out every day and collects some of the empty shells the limpkin leaves behind. You’d think that anything with a beak that big would smash the shells to smithereens, but they just have one round hole in them.
The Whistling Ducks are some of our favorites. GreatGrammy doesn’t like them. She says they’re too noisy and make too big a mess on her patio (for some reason, Grammy won’t let me use the word GreatGrammy uses to describe the mess). There are two flocks of Whistlers living on GreatGrammy’s lake, and they don’t like each other. Whoever gets there first attacks the second flock until the losers leave. I wonder how they know which birds to fight off? When they’re floating in one big circle together, they all look alike to me. Benny says not to ask silly questions. But I notice he didn’t have an answer for me. How does a Whistler know which flock it belongs to? Anyway, we really like to see the whistlers out there. When they fly in, they all land together, making a racket loud enough to be heard two lakes away. Some of them like to eat their whole corn from the water in the shallow edge of the lake, others from the grass around the patio. When they’ve all had enough to eat (or the corn is gone, which happens more often), they waddle to the grass between the patio and the pond and take naps. Sometimes the three beautiful mallards eat with them, but most of the time they stay together alone at the side of the big flock of Whistlers.
I’ve never seen so many squirrels at one time in my whole life. But they’re the cutest things to watch! They use the trees and rooftops to make one long “roadway” for scampering around the edge of the lake. They jump from the ground to the ends of the limbs and scramble to the treetops. They lift the lid of the corn feeder and sit inside to eat their corn. They sit on the tippy-top backs of the tall patio chairs, right up at the sofa windows, and let you watch them shell and eat their peanuts with those tiny teeth. Oh, Grammy says to mention that the squirrels are nice and healthy. They’re smaller here than where she lives, and a healthy tail here looks like a squirrel with mange at her house. I like them just how they are, though, because they’ll entertain you for hours if you put out enough peanuts. One thing I’d like to know. How does a Florida squirrel know about Georgia peanuts?
Well, it’s time to go to bed, now. Benny fell asleep a while ago, but I know he’d like me to say how much he’s looking forward to our vacation at The Polynesian. Seems like we’ve been dreaming of this vacation our whole lives. Guess I’d better go to sleep, too, so I can dream about it a little more. What was that?! Oh, my! How exciting! There’s a Great Horned Owl right outside our bedroom window, and he’s hooting a lullaby just for us! Auntie’s trying to get some some video of it, but Sarah says we should all go to sleep. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow, when we head west for Orlando. Good night!