Sloth Bears

My friend, April Dawn Gladu, wrote the musical adapation of "The Jungle Book" that is being performed at Imagination Stage in Bethesda right now. If you have a child in the area who is age 4 or older (or a younger child with a long attention span), I highly recommend the show. Connor and I had the pleasure of going as her guests on opening day, and even though he's only 2, he sat through the entire perfomance and has talked about it enough afterwards that he appears to have followed the show pretty well. He has even asked to go to more musicals which makes my heart leap with joy since it may mean in the future I have a partner to do these sorts of things with. Ed would rather watch paint dry than attend most musicals.

There was a review of the performance in last weekend's Post and when Connor saw the photos, he instantly recognized the monkeys. He has also talked about the tigers, and the birds in the show. However, try as I might, I have been unable to convince him that the lead character was a sloth bear. He just doesn't buy it.

I think this is because a few weeks ago, my friends invited Ed, Connor, and me on a backstage tour of the sloth bear house. Here, we got to meet - and feed - real sloth bears. You put worms on your hand, raise your hand to a tube, and then the sloth bear sucks them right in. Not surprisingly, Connor loved this. He did it many times (the joy of being the only kid on the tour). He still talks about it several weeks later. Often, when he sees a yellow line that he's not supposed to cross, he reminds me it's just like at the sloth bear house. Maybe I should put a yellow line on the kitchen floor to see if it would keep him out, on occasion.

Elaine - who also helped Connor feed the sloth bears and did not jump in horror when a few of the gross worms fell on her hand and squiggled about.