Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium has given us an extra chance to catch that cool illuminated eagle swooping down to catch a salmon and bring it back to the youngsters in the aerie. Also the giant tiger, the Narrows bridges, hopping joeys, skating penguins and all the other delights of ZooLights.

Metro Parks announced that "ZooLights will remain open until Jan. 4, as scheduled, and will reopen again Friday, Jan. 9 through Sunday, Jan. 11, to give snow-bound families one more chance to enjoy the lights."

Don't forget to bring your old holiday lights for Metro Parks to recycle as a fund-raiser. Jessica Lam of Federal Way came up with the idea, which has the added benefit of keeping those strands out of landfills. You can also drop the lights off at Tacoma Nature Center, Metro Parks HQ and all of its community and resource centers.

Hours for ZooLights are 5 to 9 p.m., and admission is $7 at the gate and the pdza.org Web site. The best deal is the $5.50 ticket at Bartell's Drugs.

Great chunks of asphalt appear to have made a break for it in the waning days of our snow dump.

City and county work crews struggled to make streets safe for people who had to venture over snow, freezing rain and ice in the days leading up to Christmas. With huge effort, they kept the arterials, and many of the hills, passable with constant sanding and plowing. They must be exhausted.

Now they've got a new problem: A plague of potholes.

Stretches of some heavily used streets crumbled under the pressure of freezing and thawing snow and ice. South 72nd Street, between Golden Given and Yakima Avenue is an obstacle course of holes big enough to swallow a Vespa.

How are the streets in your area? Holding up? Or full of holes?
Blog on to warn us about some of the rougher rides.

Hats off, or perhaps pulled down over the ears, to the dedicated library user spotted at 8:20 a.m. at Tacoma Public Library's King Branch at South 19th and Pine streets.

Tacoma's libraries are closed today, thanks to the snow, but this dedicated reader was determined to get her books returned on time.

How dedicated? She made the trip on her cross-country skis.

We were doing pretty well at keeping our car slow and steady, and decided against veering uphill into the parking lot to see what she was reading, and whether those skis were no-wax or vintage wood, and if they were wood, what kind of wax was she using.

Do you have tales of alternate transportation to work and on errands?

Are the folks who were bicycling around town late last week still two-wheeling it?

Please share the adventure with other hard-packed blogsters.

Looking for a sled? Snow shovel? De-icer?

A random check of a half dozen stores in Pierce County found availability is a mixed bag. A few stores had some of those items; some had none.

The best advice is to call first. A few stores reported shipments just came in or were on their way.

“We just got a shipment in (of sleds) but there are going fast,” Chelsea Miller at the Fred Meyer in Bonney Lake said late this morning. “They are going fast.”

The store also has a few generators and just received a pallet of de-icer, she said.

At the Puyallup K-Mart, a spokeswoman said the sleds were all gone but they had plenty of window scrapers, gloves and hats.

And the snow shovels were sold out, she said.

Lowe’s in Lakewood also was sledless.

The Wal-Mart store on Mountain Highway East didn’t have sleds, but a spokeswoman said they were expecting a shipment.

“We do have one snow shovel left,” she said.

Clara Henderson at McLendon’s Hardware in Sumner said they had sleds, toboggans, and saucers but not very many.

“We don’t have a lot of generators left,” she said. People were buying them because of the high winds expected over the weekend.

As for snow shovels, she said the store has plenty of square shovels that work just fine in snow.

Store managers and customers are encouraged to post to this item to let people know where they can get snow toys and gear.

Pierce County 4-H will hold a memorial Monday for the 15 horses that were killed last week at the boarding stable fire in the Summit area of Pierce County.
Lori Grohs, who coordinates the 4-H horse program in Pierce County, said the memorial is an effort to offer support to all the owners of the dead horses and their families. At least four of the horses were owned by 4-H members, including a 4-H adult leader, she said.
The memorial will be held at 7 p.m. at the Real Life Family Center, 17708 28th Ave. East, in the Spanaway area. Grohs said the center donated their building for the memorial.
“We are asking the owners or their family members to write something about their horses,” she said. Each horse will have a poster board to display poems and photographs, she said.
“We will eulogize each horse with what is written,” she said.
Central Pierce Fire and Rescue firefighters who responded to the Dec. 11 fire at Eckstein Farms boarding stable also are invited. Groh said they will be recognized at the memorial for their fighting the fire and caring for horse owners who came to the scene.
The hot fire spread quickly into the 5 tons of hay stored in the barn and enveloped the barn in black smoke. No one could get inside to open stall doors. A space heater in a tack room tipped over and ignited the fire, according to the county Fire Marshal investigator.
Grohs said the tragedy has affected the large Pierce County horse community deeply. She said her horse program alone has 300 youth ages 9-19 and is the second largest county 4-H program in the state.
“There is something different about losing a horse this way,” she said. Grohs has nine horses of her own on her property in the Eatonville area. “I love my dogs and cats but there is something that gets to your soul when you lose a horse. It’s a mystery.
“Horses die of broken legs and colic but this is something you can’t explain. How do you explain this to a kid?”
Grohs said they also plan to put together a number of fund raisers in the next few months to help the horse owners pay expenses of disposing of their horses and buy new equipment such as saddles lost in the fire.
The story of the fire has prompted a number of calls to The News Tribune from horse owners who want to donate horses to those who lost them.
Grohs said anyone wanting to donate a horse to a 4-H student or help the victims with expenses can call her at 360-832-6744.

The New York Times' Jennifer 8. Lee blows the lid off the world of art museum toilets in a post to the news org's City Room blog.

So to speak.

Actually, it's The Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art that documents the world of art museum toilets and bathrooms.

The museum, which exists only online, has photos and links to artistic toilets and urinals from around the world. It even includes a call for submissions.

In my brief survey, I didn't see any reference to Tacoma's "Lovesick Walls," the art on the walls of the third-floor restrooms at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center.

Anyone care to toss Tacoma's toilet room into the fray?

Here's what TNT art critic Jen Graves had to say in 2004 about the art, set inside two bathroom stalls, and created by Seattle artist Alex Schweder:

The smooth white porcelain blocks forming the walls have begun to slump and form holes and lumps that are both beautiful and grotesque, in a serene kind of boldly fleshy entropy that begs to be touched. As odd as the idea seems, this is the most private place in the center, particularly suited to this powerful and almost primal work of art.

The art installation, Lovesick Walls, can be found in the restrooms on the Ballroom level at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center. Artist Alex Schweder's work is made of porcelain. Photo taken Tuesday, November 9, 2004. (Janet Jensen/The News Tribune)

Click ahead to read the full article.

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The kids took home presents, ate a spaghetti meal and had a chance to shop for mom and dad.

But the highlight of Christmas at the North Pole, an annual event at Tacoma Christian Center, was a unanimous choice for the three Gonzalez children.

“I liked taking a picture with Santa Claus,” said Andrew, 8.

“Yeah, I liked taking a picture with Santa Claus too,” said Israel, 6.

And even though 5-year-old Vanessa remained quiet and clung to her mother’s leg, she eventually agreed that she also enjoyed getting a snapshot with St. Nick.

“They had an absolutely great time,” said 26-year-old Julia Gonzalez of Tacoma, the kids’ mother. “This was such a nice thing the church put on.”

The Gonzalezes were among more than 2,000 people who participated in the event Saturday, a joint project of Tacoma Christian Center and World Vision. The activities included songs, games, videos, a meal, a gift for the kids (already wrapped), a spot for kids to get their picture on Santa’s lap, racks of donated clothes and a room where the kids could pick up gifts for their mother and father.

More than 100 volunteers helped route the kids through the various rooms of the large church on Tacoma’s East Side. It took about three weeks to set up the celebration, the church’s pastor, Terry Harris, said.

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From reporter Brian Everstine:

The retired University Place teacher who has been stuck in Bangkok will be able to return in time for a family holiday celebration that he was once almost sure he would miss.

Dean Rennie, 75, traveled to China this summer to teach English and visited Thailand to look at orphanages that he may volunteer at during a return trip. Shortly before he was scheduled to leave, demonstrators took over Bangkok's two civilian airports, stranding more than 300,000 travelers, including Rennie. But this week the demonstrations ended, and Rennie has been able to make reservations to fly back.

"I didn't think it was going to happen this soon, but I guess miracles do happen," Rennie wrote Thursday in an e-mail from a Bangkok cafe.

Rennie said he was running around the city visiting airline offices to try and find a way home. He was able to book a flight on Asiana Airlines and will be back on Saturday.

"I am thrilled he is going to be home on Saturday for his side of the family Christmas Party," said Dean's wife, Robbie Rennie.

You can read The News Tribune's original report of Rennie's journey here.

I had a call Monday from Anne Albert and Vicki Sandvig, two friends who are searching for Vicki's lost whippet, Reiner.

Lost pet stories are always sad, and so common that we can't write about most of them. But this one has a twist: Albert and Sandvig are using cyber-tools to look for Reiner.

You can read about it in Wednesday's column, I can only jam so much into 650 words, so here's a bit more of the story.

Whippets are sight hounds, and Reiner took off after a rabbit on Oct. 30. The friends have tried all the traditional ways to look for a lost pet. And I do mean ALL the ways: Calling neighbors, putting posters in stores, schools, churches, public buildings, veterinary clinics, giving fliers to bus drivers, delivery folks, meter readers, and buying ads. And there's a $1,000 reward.

Anne's a member of an on-line group of Italian greyhound fans. When she e-mailed them for tips for the search, they sent her a list.

Here's what Anne has to say about the Web help:

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