Girard Park, Ducks and a Giant Rat-like Creature.

Girard Park is the first park we came to during our first week in Lafayette. They had just opened and its apparently the first handicap accessible park here, which is pretty awesome. The park is adjacent to a huge duck pond with Nutria and giant Christmas sized geese and various birds. There is also a Frisbee golf, or "Folfing" for all you cool kids out there, course, a 1 1/2 mile track and another swing set area.

 The other swing set area is disgusting, its covered in graffiti and we refer to it as the "Dirty Park". Also, they have a really treacherous tall red slide, that I flew down at 60 miles per hour and flew off of, almost killing myself. I don't like the dirty park.
The new park is great, we come here almost on a daily basis, when its nice out and we have met some really cool people. Steve is such a people person that he immediately makes friends and tells me to sit down and let him play. Steve is 3 and already way too cool for his mommy. Great.
The Pond is my favorite part of the park. Really. Sometimes I bake bread badly to make sure that we have something to feed all the weird animals that live in the pond. The geese are giant, the biggest birds I have ever seen and sometimes, especially when overfed, they are mean.

We came down to the pond with a huge bag of overcooked muffins and started throwing it into the lake which normally ensues a feeding frenzy. Well, this time it didn't. We walked a little more along the way and saw some of the bigger white geese bathing. I went over and started to throw muffin chunks with Steve. The birds didn't like this at all and started hissing angrily. Steve thought this was a friendly gesture, so he giggled and ran over to it and started hissing back. I had to throw myself in front of my child as well as a stale muffin to make the goose stop charging. It was terrifying but I still love them and all their hissing glory. The pond is also home to a rat-like creature, which is called a Nutria. We didn't know what they were when we first got here so Charlie threw some bread in the water and got down into its face and started petting it. When we found out what it was, some sort of mutant rat, I told him he should get a rabies shot...just in case.

 Cheers.