A Little Weight Adjustment

Messing with high-tech maps was fun last night, but the morning crowd was starting to filter into the lobby. I slipped around a partitioned wall into the kids' nature corner, where an unattended felt display board stood propped on an easel beside a wooden magnetic balance scale. Someone had neatly organized plush acorns on one side and wooden leaves on the other, perfectly balanced. Tragic. I grabbed a chubby plush acorn, slapped an adhesive felt caterpillar onto its fuzzy side like a saddle, and tipped the whole concoction right into the leaf pan. The wooden arm snapped down with a sharp, lopsided thud. Balance completely ruined. I kicked back behind a wooden toy bin, waiting for the first tot to try making sense of my amended ecology.