It's All Happening At the Zoo

So, Thomas and I went to the zoo on Sunday.

There's this zoo here in Wilmington--it used to be called the Tote-Em-In Zoo (which I never understood. The name always made it sound to me like some good samaritans found a giraffe in the woods and just toted it in!) but is now called Tregembo Animal Reserve or something like that.

I'd never gone there before because I'd always heard that it was sad--that the animals were miserable, etc. But then on Friday night we ran into some friends at the bar, and they said that it was fun and that there was a porcupine there that would dance for peanuts.

Hold the phone, I said. You can feed the animals?

Yeah, we were so there. Frankly, I had hoped to touch things, but that was not to be.

I did see this awesome cockatoo that spoke as if it were possessed by the devil, and I'm pretty sure said, "Fuck," to me:

See the evil glint in his dark, dark eyes???

And then I took pictures of animal porn. Some intentional, some unintentional.

Intentional Porn:
Hahahaha! The bearded dragons are on top of each other!! Because it's like they're having sex!!!

Unintentional Porn:
Umm. Yeah. Not the best angle for this lion.

I had fun throwing peanuts to the monkeys and speaking to everything as if it were my new best friend, because the proximity was such that I felt as if everything WAS my new best friend.

And here is the porcupine of awesomeness, who started the whole thing. I did not feed it any peanuts because the sign did not say that it was ok to feed him peanuts. And I have very strict morals about these things. Which is why I take pictures of lion bits.

Adventures with Wildlife

So, Oscar Peterson is a yellow bellied slider. Thanks goes to my friend Doug for identifying him. I went online to check, and oh yeah, that's him. So I'm happy, because now I know better how to care for him. There aren't very good instructions for "little turtle that must have crawled up from Greenfield Lake." We got him a UV lamp this weekend. He's eating a little more. So far, so good.

We found a litter of 5 kittens in the front yard last night and I am very, very upset about it. I've almost posted several rants about my neighbors and their insistence on feeding the stray cats who are now so numerous that they travel in packs up and down the street. These cats are sickly and flea-ridden and carrying god knows what diseases. They poop in our yards and live under our houses, peeing and pooping under there like it's a huge litterbox put erected for their convenience. They yowl all night and kitten at all times of the year, including January, causing me to have to spend countless hours combing the yard for kittens before letting my dogs out. Because, people, my dogs WILL eat the cats.

It's no life for them. They're always gummy-eyed and being run over by cars. They're not wild because they don't have to hunt, but they're not domesticated because they're not CARED for. Animal control won't come and pick them up--they say they'll come and get them if I rent traps and catch them, but otherwise, it's my problem. The supposed fine for keeping strays is something like $50 for every instance of an unlicensed animal, and $50 for an animal with no rabies shot. I'd love to somehow sic animal control on the neighbors and have them charged for every single cat and kitten within a 2 block radius. Perhaps then it wouldn't be so "cute" to see them all come running up at feeding time.

Look, I don't mean to sound cold-hearted. There are 5 adorable days-old baby kittens in my front yard. Yes, they're sweet, but I know what they are going to grow up into. And I take my responsibilities as a pet owner very seriously.

I tried to capture the kittens, but I only got one (because it's already ill, I think) and it didn't seem fair to take him away from the others all scared and sick, so I put him back and I'm going to try again to get them all together and then take them to the shelter. Until then, it's yard patrol.

In final wildlife news, I'm on a crusade against the slugs that are eating my daylilies. As you know, I'm deathly afraid of worms and slugs are pretty much the same concept. When I unearthed a huge nest of them under the garden edging I nearly died of disgust and fear and rage and shock. So I put out dishes of beer around the daylilies and for the first 12 hours, nothing seemed to be happening. But the next morning, there were 25 dead slugs at the bottom of the beer. I almost took a picture of the death pool to show you, but I also almost puked when I saw it. So I don't think that needs to live on my blog.

Pender Pines

Yesterday, Jennifer and I ventured out to Pender Pines, which is an awesome nursery and garden center in Pender County.

They have an incredible selection of plants and Jen and I shopped for about 2 hours.

I got: Red Butler (hehe) lantana, a pink penta, 3 gerbera daisies, some bronze snapdragons, and mixed coleus babies. Jen got me some cacti that rule. One looks like it has purple eyes and antenna.

Here I am standing beside our purchases (the bulk of which are obviously Jennifer's).



They have beautiful gardens to walk through, with all manner of ponds and bridges and garden ornaments, including this very awesome sea serpent made of mosses and things:



Finally, we visited their on-site emus. Last year, you could feed the emus. This year not so much. I must admit that it did kind of hurt, but I was still dissapointed not to be able to do it again.

Today I Touched An Alligator

You may not know this about me, but I really like to touch wildlife. I have some kind of running inner list of all the things I've touched and today I added several entries: hedgehog, ball python and baby alligator!

Today Animal Planet came to our local Time Warner Cable store with an white bengal tiger, a baby black bear, a small bobcat type thing that I forget the name of, an alligator, hedgehog, skunk, ball python and tarantula. I did not touch the tarantula. I don't know if I'm sorry about that or not.

Last summer, we went with our friends Tom and Christa to the Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, which seems dumb but is totally NOT. It is a really cool aquarium. And they had a touch tank where you could touch rays, just like all aquariums. And I touched the rays and it was cool. They feel like velvet. And then a baby hammerhead shark swam up. I didn't know whether or not I was supposed to touch the shark, so I didn't. Then I found out that I was TOTALLY allowed to touch that shark and I waited and waited for it to come back and it never did. I'm very sad that I had the opportunity to touch a hammerhead shark and did not.

I did once ride an elephant. It was an old, sad elephant at a renaissance fair who had a rug on his back and walked in a circle, but I rode him nonetheless and I'm very glad that I can always say I rode an elephant.