Children's Page

The Kelly Circus Comes To Berlin, NY

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Click on all images to enlarge.
Today, the circus came to our small town. In winter, the Kelly Circus lives in Hugo, Oklahoma during the winter. All circuses follow the sun, so to speak. They start south and move north as the cold retreats. In fall, they reverse and go back south again. Circuses like this one have traveled all over America for over 100 years. Ever since trains were invented, the ability to move many animals and circus performers all over the country became a booming business.

The big, three ring circuses got to only the big cities. They still use trains. But small, one ring circuses go to small towns. And Berlin is about as small a town as one can find on a map. Every year, the circus visits us for only one day. They arrive in big trucks and vans and quickly set up the tents on a mowed field in the center of town.Families live together in these big trailers. Some people live in smaller vans. They never stay in one place but travel every other day. This way, they visit over 200 towns each summer.

They don't have any lions, tigers or bears like the big circuses but they do have some very big animals. Here is the tent where the big snakes live. I noticed they didn't have a gypsy moth tent. I find them much scarier than mere snakes. I have snakes here on the mountain. The all live in the stone walls and slither across the grass. Along with the hop toads. None of our snakes get very big. It must be the super-cold winters when they must hiberate and loose weight that cause this.

And here is Houdini the python that ate his blanket today.

Houdini the Burmese python gave his owner a shock after swallowing a queen-size electric blanket, including the electrical cord and control box.
Emergency surgery was required to remove the blanket and tangle of wires that x-rays showed was running through 8ft of the python's 12ft (3.6m) body.

Needless to say, Houdini didn't visit Berlin today.

There is a very friendly camel that children can ride. The camel even gave the young man handling it a kiss and it begged to be rubbed behind the ears. This looks like a nice summer job, no? Camels don't live here in New York. They prefer the desert and the hot sun. They would be very unhappy living in snow drifts.

Then there were the little ponies. The little girl holding the spray bottle works with her mother, running the pony-go-round. She keeps the bugs off and grooms the ponies. She also gives them treats. She gets to see a lot of America and has probably slept in more towns in one year than most of us will in our entire lives.

And here is a fine example of the present leadership in America: elephants on their stomachs. The elephants are the biggest of all the animals in this small circus. They give children rides going round and round inside the circus tent. They also perform tricks during the shows. The elephants are bigger than my ox team, Chip and Dale. But like my oxen, one gets them to do things by touching them with a stick and talking to them. 'Back, back, step back,' for when one wants them to go backwards, 'gee' for turn right and 'haw' for turn left. 'Kneel' and 'Stand up' are obvious. When these large animals are babies, one trains them to respond. Teaching adults is very hard, ask your parents!

Next year, the Kelly Circus plans on coming back. We hope. See you all next summer, when the crickets chirp and the frogs ribbet.

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My Clutch Of Chicks Came Today

Elaine Meinel Supkis

My baby chicks picked their way out of their blue egg shells. The people hatching them in Texas then put them all in a small cardboard box with some shavings to keep them warm and sent them, only a few hours old, to my farm in New York.

When I put them in their new home which is a big tub, they all ran out of their box, peeping and looking at everything. So much to see! They ran over to their water fountain and ran into it and out, getting everything wet. They ran into the nest and out of it, too.

They ran behind the box and began to cry, "I'm a lost chick! Save me!" at the top of their little lungs. "Cheep....CHEEP!"

I put some chick feed into their big tub and tapped it with my finger. Tap. Tap. Then I clucked like a mother hen. Suddenly, all the chicks decided I was their mother and they let me pick them up, move them around or rush over to me when I call them.

This is called "imprinting" and baby birds and lots of other animals will decide the first one to act like a mother, is mother. They then love you forever, which is a lot of fun. When these chicks who look like little chipmunks, grow up, they will come whenever I call and follow me all over the farm when I am working.

But they can't wander around alone!

The red fox visits our farm, too. She sniffs around for chicks to eat. And even more dangerous are the Red Tailed Hawks who have a big nest in the woods above the house. The two hawks have sharp eyes and they can see even small chicks in the grass.

They, too, have babies now for it is spring time and the eggs of the big birds are hatching and all the song birds are now here, robins have been patrolling the pastures, looking for bugs and every morning and evening, we can hear the chorus of birds in the hedges and trees, singing their hearts out, all of them are now building nests and laying eggs.

This is a nice time of year. It makes us all happy.

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Russian Kids Play In Pink Snow

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Easter is coming and Russia got a special gift this week---pink snow.

Click here to see the pictures of pink snow.

Mother Nature can be playful. Snow is fun if you don't have to shovel it.

Snow is also pretty. Trees and bushes are bare in the cold winter wind. But snow is like a warm fur coat to them. The oak tree and the pine tree flirt with the wind and shower the snow on the ground.

Sparky, my horse, loves snow. He comes from a long line of horses born in the Alps, Europe's highest mountains. When it snows, he gallops and prances and the wind blows his tail like a white flag.

I have some hens that lay colored eggs. They are blue. They can't lay red eggs. So the Easter Bunny has to color them, himself.

The Easter Bunny didn't color the snow. Scientists say, the snow flakes grew around red dust from Mongolia. Mongolia is a very dry desert and many dinosaur bones have been found there, buried in the red rocks. Most of the dinosaur eggs we see in museums are found there.

The Easter Bunny must have forgotten to deliver them, didn't he?

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The Frog's Tea Party

Another anonymous tale from the 1881 edition of the St. Nicholas Book. The Frogs host a fine Tea Party.





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Buying A Haunted House

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Many years ago, I wanted to buy a house. I didn't have much money so the houses looked pretty bad. I was with a real estate lady, driving around Staten Island when I spotted a house for sale. It looked like a house in horror movies, just like this one: Hitchcock's "Psycho"

Or this house, drawn by Charles Addams:

"Wait! Let's go there!" I said.

She said, "Oh dear, that house is cheap but it is on a high hill."

I jumped out of her car and ran up the broken wooden stairs. Up and up I climbed. At the top, the porch was in dark shadows. Big pine trees surrounded the house. An owl hooted. The house was painted all gray. Gloomy. Glommy. Clammy.

I loved it.

"Let's go inside!" I said to the real estate lady. She couldn't find the key. I decided to climb the railing of the porch to see if I could go in a broken window upstairs.

"Please, don't go inside," the lady said in a scared voice.

There was a tall tower. The owl's nest was up there. I wanted to climb up. I cleaned cobwebs off a window to look inside. It was a mess.

"Maybe I should buy this house," I said. The real estate lady nearly fainted.

"Oh, my," she said, looking at me funny.

It was a very creepy house.

I went home and told Joe about it. He said, "Wait, we just published a book about haunted houses. Let me look." There it was! In the book.

"Now I have to buy it!" I said. But I didn't buy it. There was no train station nearby. We couldn't live there and work in New York City. So I bought a brownstone. It was a strange house, too. It even had rats inside the walls. I was so happy.

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Late Kate

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Many people think a cartoonist at the New Yorker magazine made up those spooky Addams Family cartoons but he was merely echoing much older cartoons.

Each year, at Christmas, good little boys and girls in the Victorian Era got books called "St. Nicholas Books" which had a wide variety of puzzles, projects, books, stories and cartoons. This one is from one of my oldest books of this sort.

Published in 1881, volume VIII of the series, the artist who is very good and extremely funny, is totally anonymous. One longs to know who penned these cartoons. I will post a few examples.

One thing that strikes me is how Victorians, even as they built their spooky houses, considered them SPOOKY. This is something to consider. Deliberately raising one's children in a haunted house! I was born in a Victorian haunted house. This is probably why I renovated so many of them and am drawn to dark, dank, broken, bizarre Victorian houses.

Once, while house hunting, I wanted desperately to buy this bizarre 1875 mansion that sat on a high bluff above the crashing seas. It even had a Widow's Walk that probably was the site of more than one suicide, it certainly was picturesque.

That very same day, I was given this book by my father-in-law who was a publisher. "Haunted Houses of America" was the title and the property I wanted was deep inside. I laughed up a riot. Har.

Boo.

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Stories and Fun Things For Bored Adults and Interested Children

I love telling stories (not just plain lying *cough* *cough*) and being an old geezer, there are many tall and short tales to spin. This is just launching the web page. Be alert for future postings here.

Elaine
Granny without grandkids *ahem*