Bear and Peacock are friends!

I know we surprised all of you with Pudu and Capybara are friends last summer (who thought the world's smallest deer would hang out with the world's largest rodent happily?), but isn't it just as surprising that bear and peacock can hang out together?  Granted that most brown bears aren't really avid carnivores, but isn't that what we come to believe from childhood on?  Not Raspberry!  This weekend was his first trip to the zoo - Detroit, of course - and he got to witness a large population of peacocks taking refuge from the biting wind in the Grizzly Bear enclosure, complete with two bears.  Maybe there really is safety in numbers - ten peacocks, two grizzlies?

It was really fun to see all of our zoo friends again, cold weather and all.  In fact, the cold weather meant that we got to see some things we never did during the heat of summer.  The arctic fox was busy and in white for the season, and there were actually four!  All summer we thought there was just one lazy guy, but today they were all up shuffling around!  We could see the tiger's breath - that's a lot of breath!  And the wolverines were all sprawled out on their backs in little sun holes they had dug, enjoying some warmth from the now nearing sun.  Raspberry loved it.  How do we know?  He was tired the rest of the day.  We can't wait to bring him back in July or August!

Honk if you love hooters

The Toledo Zoo had an Oktoberfest celebration like Detroit's, but Toledo was asking for $40 per person for their party. So we passed on that, and just plain went to the zoo for the animals. Jon had a great time as usual watching the hippo pool (they even climbed out of the water and trundled around for awhile!). In contrast, the meerkats were scampering about. We wonder if they are aware that their enclosure is right next to the white lions courtesy of Siegfriend and Roy? Being a Sunday in the fall, attendance in the Africa section was low, but they were still serving delicious flame-broiled burgers on demand.  Most unique about this visit? The penguins were honking. Listen for yourself:

Not captured on the video is when a couple of them would hide under rocks and make an entirely different, guttural sound. Were they having a good time, or just sneaking around?

Oktoberfest is German for beer...

...according to Matt. We made a special trip to the Detroit Zoo with Matt and Kristin for their Oktoberfest event, featuring authentic German food and beer, a very loud polka band, and an enormous inflatable dude wearing Lederhosen. This day was special in more ways than one, however--it was also Adopt a Pet Day in the zoo's parking lot, the largest single gathering of dogs and cats in need of homes in Michigan. Honestly, we have no idea how we managed to escape without another mouth to feed. Matt and Kristin very nearly took a beautiful kitten home. Ah well, that just opens them up to the possibility of getting a puppy down the road.... :-) Jon wished he could have adopted one of the most oversized cats we'd ever seen, but couldn't because "Mr. Bigglesworth" didn't have a track record of living with dogs.

Meanwhile, back in the zoo, we enjoyed a good laugh at the prairie dogs. Last spring, they had had a litter of babies, and we remember how tiny they all were. Now, they are all fully grown and plumped up in readiness for the cold season. Our other favorite sighting of the day was the elusive aardvark. In the past, we have waited for hours to see him move and have never been rewarded until now, when he lifted his head momentarily. Just about the only hard-to-find zoo animal we have yet to see is an armadillo--maybe we'll get the chance at Toledo sometime soon.

Dedicated to Matt

Go Blue!  Today's tailgate was topnotch, as usual.  We even celebrated the fifth birthday of a friend's daughter this morning, complete with a flying Barbie (yes, a flying Barbie) and cupcakes.  The game was wet and Eastern isn't much of an opponent (there was no wavering in Cortney's allegiences).  But even without the highly tense moments of a good football game, the afternoon at the stadium was highly worth the ode to Monty Python and the Holy Grail  performed by the marching band during halftime, complete with King Arthurs (read: band members) lopping legs off of Black Knights (read: mascots of other teams) and commentary in a thick British accent.  In other football news, a certain other green & white team pulled out a win in the first overtime against a certain blue and gold team, which can be construed as a positive thing, if it weren't so darned hard to root for MSU.

And tonight's entry is dedicated to Matt ("I don't make the blog enough") and his favorite heroic characters, Zooperboy and Moo, as pictured at right.  Thanks for making dinner tonight, even if we did have to assemble our own desserts, and even though Kristin and Cortney are not sorry about beating you  and Jon in Mario Party.

Please continue to pray for the vicitms of Hurricane Katrina and give if you can.

www.salvationarmyusa.org 

Of giraffe tongues and porcupine tails

We used our Labor Day off for a zoo trip to Binder Park with Matt and Kristin. Out of all of our zoo memberships, we picked this one to visit because they close for the season soon, and how can you turn down giraffe feeding? Matt and Kristin thought that was worth the trip alone, enjoying the giraffes' long, scratchy black tongues pulling off gymnastic feats to reach our biscuits.

We discovered that the animals they use for their educational stage shows are completely different species, not on exhibit anywhere else in the zoo. This is how we got a chance to get up and close and personal with a fenic fox, who was very shy and had big, sensitive ears. We really wanted to hold him, but that luxury was reserved for the trainer.

Another animal we wished we could touch was the prehensile-tailed porcupine. We heard that his quills have microscopic barbs on them that would embed themselves in your skin, requiring a visit to the hospital and a dose of muscle-relaxant to get them out! How could something so cute be so dangerous? His special training taught him to tap his enormous, wide nose on the handler's fingers to get a treat, so holding the carrot just out of reach encouraged him to dangle from his special tail for the prize.

We continue to pray for those affected by Hurricane Katrina. www.redcross.org