Baboons

Sigh. Garion came home last week with an assignment to choose his favorite African animal, write a report about the animal, create some kind of visual aid such as a diorama or collage featuring the animal, and prepare an oral presentation on the animal. The kid is in KINDERGARTEN, for crying out loud. Of course what all of this really means is that I had a ton of homework this week as I tried to lead Garion by nose through through the intricacies of academic research and writing. Since we were out of town last weekend, we were left with four nights to put this little project together. Garion chose baboons as his animal (narrowed down from "monkeys") and we spent Monday through Wednesday nights on research and "writing." Writing meaning that I fed Garion information, asked him a very pointed question about said information, and tried to get him to answer in a complete sentence, which I then wrote down, and he (laboriously) typed onto the computer. Example:
Me: oh, it says here that baboons eat grass, roots, seeds, and berries, a few shellfish, birds, and hares. So....what do baboons eat?
Garion: ummmmm.....what's a hare?
Me: a rabbit..but they only eat a few of those. Do you think they eat mostly grass, roots, and seeds?
Garion: I guess
Me: ok, so should we say 'Baboons east mostly grass, roots, seeds and berries'?
Garion: what can I have for dessert tonight?
And on and on and on.
Then, we (meaning me) had to come up with the visual. I thought, ok, cool we'll do a collage. We finish the report and I realize, much to my chagrin, that we don't really have any pictures of baboons just hanging around the house. Argh. Had I been thinking ahead I could have bullied Garion into choosing a giraffe for his animal and we could have plundered that issue of the Smithsonian that was sitting right there on our living room table, mocking me with its easy accessibility and gorgeous photos of giraffes in all their glory. But, alas I did not think ahead and it was way to late to start the report over again. So today at I lunch I headed down to Bookman's and embarked on a slow an tortuous perusal of National Geographics for the last 30 years, praying that someone working for the magazine had a sometime saw fit to profile baboons. And, praise God!, I found one from 1987. Good enough. As I sit here now, the report is finished and printed, the collage is drying on the kitchen counter, and Garion did one read through of his oral report. And I need a drink.