follow that bee!

Last weekend in Olympia was the annual Procession of the Species. It's a great "parade" on the Saturday after Earth Day where anyone is welcome, as long as you're in costume (some sort of animal or plant), don't have any pets with you, aren't riding in a motorized vehicle, and don't have any printed words showing. (We're so on the boat for next year.) The whole family headed downtown and as we were getting out of the car, somebody dressed up as a bumble bee went whizzing by on a scooter. It was a funny sight, and we just said "follow that bee!" and made our way to the parade route.



There was a lot of drumming, quite a bit of batik and paper mache, and some really awesome costumes. My favorite were some cranes walking on stilts:


There was also really cool pillbug made out of duct tape, and some geoducks, pronounced "gooeyducks" -- a weird-looking clam found around here, and also the mascot at Evergreen State College in Olympia. Francois was partial to the little-bit-sleazy guy dressed as a satyr. (I couldn't remember the word, and don't even want to begin to tell you the results that showed up when I googled "man + goat".) He also liked a random guy dressed as a fur trapper and running sporadically through the crowd yelling "homosapien! homosapien!" Simeon's favorite was a float of a fish that was big and black with huge shiny teeth and a big green light over his head, reminiscent of the deep water scary fish in Nemo.



The hippies, the mohawks, the tree huggers, and even the belly dancers were out in full force. We had a great time!