3:00 snapshot #961

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First Zoo visit?

I was looking through my Aunt and Uncle's Flickr account when I came across this picture, and realized it was probably my first visit to a zoo. The kids with glasses are my cousins Peter, David, and Joanna; the little blonde boy is my brother Andy. My mother is holding me, it must be in the summer of 1970. The photo is labeled "Thornton Burgess Museum," but I think that's not true: the place called The Thornton Burgess Museum is in Sandwich, Mass., on Cape Cod, where the author and conservationist Thornton Burgess was born. However, he moved to Hampden Mass. later in his life, and the property where he lived was purchased by Mass Audubon. That place was very close to where I grew up, and I seem to remember our family visiting it more than once.
That property is called Laughing Brook, and is a Mass Audubon sanctuary that had a collection of native wildlife up until a decade or so ago. If my memory is correct, Laughing Brook sent some animal ambassadors to a park event that the family went to when I was about 5 or 6, and I got to hold a black rat snake. That experience never left me, and made an imprint that is more obvious now than almost any other time of my life.

Thank you Dotty and Scotty for sharing your photo albums!