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Cute Kids' Characters LbNA #57345

Owner:dancingpecan
Plant date:Mar 20, 2011
Location: Northlake Nature Center Hwy 190
City:Mandeville
County:St. Tammany
State:Louisiana
Boxes:3
Found by: dancingpecan (2)
Last found:Oct 16, 2011
Status:FOa
Last edited:Mar 20, 2011
Max, Timothy and Tutu decided to go to Northlake Nature Center and go for a walk. They had heard it was a great place to see birds.They walked along the wooden boardwalk and passed by a number of stone markers listing plant types. They also saw wooden planks labeled with Station numbers. At Station # 6 a large crow flew down and started pulling hair from Tutu's tail. They hurried along the trail and the crow didn't follow, but poor Tutu was very upset. They soon reached a spot where there was a green bulletin/chalk board to their left, and a boardwalk to to their right that led up to 2 couple of platforms with two more bulletin/chalk boards on them. There was a third bulletin board on the ground off to the right as well. There was an old brick building ahead of them that looked deserted. They walked up the walkway to their right and noticed a marker between the platforms on the left side that read "In Loving Memory of John C. Hawkins Sr. BSA Troop 55" They walked past that onto the second platform. Tutu noticed a cozy little spot right under the far west corner of the platform, right next to one of the support beams under a branch where he could hide from the crow and wait for his friends to come back.

Max and Timothy decided to continue on. They walked across a wooden bridge over a beaver pond where they stopped to watch fish and turtles for a while. Eventually they walked on until they saw a sign saying EAGLE TRAIL. Max thought it meant that there were eagles along the trail and he was excited at the thought of seeing eagles, so they agreed to go that way. The path was now dirt but they did walk over 2 short boardwalk sections where the ground looked like it probably got very muddy when it rained. Max pointed out a stand of Magnolia trees on their left that he had noticed from one of the short boardwalks. They had walked about 24 steps from the end of the second boardwalk when Max noticed a large lizard eating a grub on a dead pine log that had fallen so that it was pointing towards the beaver pond. He hopped up on the log and chased the lizard along the log to a second log that crossed the first. The lizard went left towards the base of the tree and disappeared over the side among some small camphor saplings that were right up against the log. Max sat down on the log, kind of nestled in the camphor, to wait for the lizard to come back.

Timothy didn't want to wait to see if the lizard returned, so he kept walking. He noticed a sign saying PELICAN PARK with an arrow pointing right. "A whole park full of pelicans? This I have to see.", so he went along the trail to the right. There was a bench on his ride side, between him and the water and maybe about 15 feet ahead he saw a slender holly tree on the right. He heard a weird "cronk cronk" noise and it frightened him, so he scampered along a downed log over to where there was a large pine tree with a trunk that twinned/split starting about 4 ft off the ground. There, behind the big pine, he snuggled down in some pine needles and bark to wait for someone to come and find him.

Be alert. There is poison ivy along some parts of the trails here. Please rehide the boxes carefully

For more information about the nature center visit:
http://www.northlakenature.org