Zoe's Zoo -- Free for You!

Growing up, I once heard my mom say, "Nothing in my past ever prepared me to be a zoo-keeper!" Why that's funny is because our house truly was a zoo. We had snakes, a fox, a buzzard, rabbits, chickens, goats, horses, dogs, cats, caimans, lizards, turtles, fish, all kinds of birds, cows, and once an opossum. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but you get the idea. Once my two youngest kids found a garter snake and put it in a fish tank with a wire lid. It kept pushing the wire up and getting out, until I finally told them to find the snake and let it go. When they found the snake, they discovered two very interesting things about garter snakes. 1) That one was female and 2) Garter snakes bear live young. Twenty-one of them in my middle daughter's bed—and of all the kids, she was the only one afraid of snakes! One of those silly baby serpents, the size of earth worms, had itself convinced it was a cobra and would rear up and strike at us. Even though I knew that itty bitty thing couldn't hurt me, I decided to take him at his word and steer clear. We let them go and for weeks saw little snakes all around our house. Poor Lauren! We nearly had to move her to another room! So here's a freebie for you based on my childhood and that of my own kids: Zoe's Zoo. (Click on the image to download.)