A Different Kind of Egg Hunt

It is still amazing that a tornado swept through north St. Louis County, just a few mile south of us, damaging over twenty-five hundred homes - several hundred totally destroyed - and there where no fatalities. The pictures that they are showing on the local TV news look like a war zone. The tornado hit the airport closing it down for Sunday and causing Donna to reschedule her return flight until Tuesday. Another "ripple effect" of the storm was that it turned our Saturday morning Easter Egg Hunt into an indoor activity - without the hunt. It was way too wet, and it did cut the usual number of children who attend by half. It was still a great event with lots of wonderful sharing, teaching, and connecting with scores of families from our community. I took some pictures, many of which ended up being out of focus and had to be deleted. You can see the decent ones on our church web page at http://www.florissantchurchofchrist.org/ and click on Church Photo Gallery and then on the blue "Easter Egg Hunt". I am so thankful and appreciative of all the folks who put so much work into making this great annual event so wonderful. It is one of the best planned and executed events that we do all year, and we did touch the lives of a lot of our community friends.

Another "ripple" in the storm involved our friendly goose who has been sitting her nest in our back yard for the last three weeks. We've been checking on her several times a day and were looking forward to seeing her little babies swimming behind her in our pond. Not gonna happen. Saturday, I noticed she was gone - for more than just a break - and walked out to find her eggs out of her nest and just on the edge of the pond.

The nest was just off this picture at the lower left corner.

I remembered waking up in the early morning darkness to a lot of honking from multiple geese - or at least it seemed like a lot of geese. It may have just been a very upset mom. I assumed it was another animal that knocked the eggs out of the nest, because we've seen that happen before, but then I noticed that the nest was washed clean without any feathers or nesting material at all. After the worst of the storm Friday night, I stepped out on the back porch and I could hear the pond's overflow spill-way roaring with flooding water. I think the nest just got flooded and washed away. Mom and Dad were gone and they have not returned. I guess we were a lot closer to the storm damage then we thought.