Tomorrow starts our beary first heat wave of the season. (For those of you, who don’t get cleaver little invented weather words, “heat waves” are when it’s above 90F degrees – a little above 32C – for three or more days.) We’ve already had several days in the 80s, so figure we would need the Teddy Bear Pool Opening before the heat wave hit.

We set the contacting chain in action by telling Ding and Tee’s sparrow buddies to contact our buddies, Pete the Pigeon and Sammy the Squirrel, so they would tell all the other small city Animals. We called some of our stuffed animal buddies to invite them and have them call more stuffies, until every stuffy in the area, and just about all around the world knew about it. (Our daughters were happy to find out Dilly was coming, and we were all happy to hear Bob T. Bear, Tequila Teddy, J.D., and a bunch of our other buddies were coming.)

Molly and the mice, who help take care of the Hotel NOLA, already knew it was time to open the pool, so they got help last week from some of the park’s animals and birds to pull the cover off the pool, giving the ducks and geese some time to clean it a bit by eating out of it. (Ewww)

We got there early to surprise our buddies, after there . What the ducks and geese wouldn’t eat, we vaccuumed out, before everyone got there. This years pool opening party was nothing but fun, food and naps! No work involved at all foe most.

We hadn’t seen Sammy the Squirrel in a while, so were a bit shocked to realize, he is now older then his grandfather was, and is a great grandfather himself. Each generation named their oldest son Sammy, so it got quite confusing. Mrs. Sammy noticed our reaction, but waited until Sammy wandered off searching for great-grandson #94. She laughed and told us, that, at their age, they know all their family has names, but it’s just easier to remember them by number. (Squirrels average a liter of about 6, every year, and have their first liter when they are about 1!)

She told us that squirrels, generally don’t live past 6. This a’scared us greatly, a’cuz we know Sammy is getting up to 6 already, if not there now! Mrs. Sammy told us that it’s not as bad as it sounds. There are a bunch of reasons squirrels don’t get older, and they include not enough food, storms, cats, dogs, and cars. Thanks to storage at the hotel, the squirrels will always have enough food. Thanks to friends like Axlerod, Lady, Dee, Tee, and Tee’s buddies, who can tell their kind not to eat squirrels, there’s a lot less worrying about dogs and cats. Mrs. Sammy still remembers the death of Sammy Sr. in that terrible flooding accident during Tropical Storm Flloyd, so she has convinced Sammy to move into Hotel NOLA next winter. And, finally, since Hotel NOLA is in Teddy Bear World, they can’t get run over by cars.  Mr. and Mrs. Sammy should live to be the world’s oldest squirrels.

Anyway, the day was full of games, food and naps. Of course, naps were often interrupted by excited kids wanting to show their parents their special dives. We weren’t close enough to get wet, but, if you have over 1000 stuffies and small city animals, with most of them having their own kids, it’s hard to tell which “DaddyDaddyDaddy, watch this dive!” is being called over to you.

ESPN (Mommy note: They confuse the sport’s TV station with telepathy) runs deep in stuffies – we all surprised the kids at the same time, by running into the pool with one massive cannonball flop, and soaked the entire line waiting to dive.

Then, to tease us right back, Tee called out boldly (what happened to that shy kitty cat from a few years ago?), “Sharks in the Middle!” We all turned from cannonball daddies to sharks in the middle, ready to tag any child bold enough to try to swim past us without getting caught.