California travelogue for kids

Last weekend H & W drove down the coast to Santa Barbara to visit some friends from New York. It was a 6-hour drive! But we stopped a lot along the way. And we saw many wild animals along the way.

We went to a beach called "Guadeloupe Dunes." As we were driving away from the beach, a coyote crossed the road, only 3 meters away from us. He just trotted right by us, unconcerned. Then, we looked up into the sky and saw a small swallow chasing a larger red-tailed hawk. She was squawking and buzzing around the hawk - not even afraid that the hawk was much bigger. We figured out that the swallow was trying to keep the hawk away from her baby chicks.

At another spot along the coast, we stopped at San Luis pier to have lunch. As we walked up the length of the pier we spotted a floating platform. It was loaded down with barking sea lions. Just like the ones you can see at Pier 39 in San Francisco. They were barking and biting, sleeping and snoring, stretching and swimming. One big happy family, for the most part. And yes, they were smelly from rotten fish!

This pier was all about fish and those who like to eat them. People, sea lions, pelicans and seagulls all buying or stealing the fish off the fishing boats. There were MANY pelicans. We spotted a pelican, who had a huge fish in her mouth. The fish was in the saggy part of her long beak, which looks like a sack. She had the fish, now all she had to do was swallow it whole. [As you know pelicans don't have teeth.] She needed to concentrate. It's hard to swallow a fish whole. So she landed in the water. Oh yummy, lunchtime!

Just as she was trying to swallow the fish, a harbor seal poked its head out of the water, very near the pelican. The harbor seal was cute. He didn't look greedy to us. But guess what? He saw that Mrs. Pelican had a fish and thought: oh yummy, lunchtime! He didn't bite Mrs. Pelican. He just kept swimming around him. Mrs. Pelican moved on, struggling with the fish. [It is VERY hard to swallow a WHOLE fish when there is an obnoxious seal swimming around you.] The seal didn't say anything. He just looked at the pelican, the way your dog looks at you when it wants a treat. The look said, "hey, I have a GREAT idea! Why don't you give ME the fish?" Mrs. Pelican was flustered. She all of the sudden realized that the fish was way too big for her to swallow whole and she was not going to get any peace and quiet. She might choke after all. So Mrs. Pelican dropped the fish in the water and flew off in disgust. The smart seal snapped it up in one quick gulp. "Yum! Thanks buddy!" he seemed to say to Mrs. P.

At the end of the pier we saw a family of American Indians of the Chumash tribe, fishing. They had caught three different brightly colored starfish - one was yellow, one was orange and one was red. They fed the hungry starfish squid and then threw them back. We thought that was nice of them.

Finally we sat down to lunch in this funky old seafood restaurant, which reminded us of Maine, to order - what else - seafood? Everybody else was having seafood for lunch so why not us? At this restaurant, we sat at a glass table with a square hole in the middle covered with mirrors. We could look down at the water below the pier to see fish, birds and seals swimming by.

In front of our table was a large glass window, which looked out at the side of the pier and beyond to the ocean. Along the side of the pier was a long wooden railing on which sat many pelicans and sea gulls eating their sea food lunch just like us. One pelican landed fish-in-beak when we were half way through lunch. His fish was very big. No matter what he tried - wiggling, stretching, and tossing - the fish just would not go down no matter whether it was head first or tail first or even sideways. This went on for many minutes. In the meanwhile other pelicans would land fish-in-beak and quickly swallowed their lunch. Just when it looked like the poor pelican was about to give up, he finally managed to swallow his lunch. He worked so hard! At least he did not end up giving HIS fish to a greedy seal or another bird.

When we are out in the country on our trip, we are not surprised to see animals. We have also seen many wild animals in Berkeley recently. A few days after we got back from our road trip, we were sitting at our dining room table eating lunch, and looked up to see a full grown stag-deer with impressive antlers casually stroll across our backyard. He went up the steps and behind the garage where he cheerfully helped himself to the apples growing there. We thought: oh dear, what to do? We decided the deer could finish his lunch and so could we. Upon finishing munching our lunches, we went down to the yard and told the deer it was time to go. He left after giving us a dirty look and sticking his tongue out at us.

The next night we nearly bumped into an adult raccoon, who was on the way to dinner at the neighbor's garbage cans. It took one look at us and ran away in the opposite direction as fast as it could.

Preserve wildlife and throw a party today!