utenzi

I went to the state zoo in Asheboro today. I wanted to play with a new camera and what better place to take pictures than a zoo? I invited a friend to go along since I have a 1+1 membership. We were there from when they opened at 9am to 3:35pm---almost their closing time---and we never stopped walking the entire day. Her shins were hurting and my feet just ached. Dehydrated? Sure, as well as being a little sunburnt where sweating and wiping cleaned the sunblock off, but it's great to see so many animals and their respective environments in just one day. I took 510 pictures with my Canon, I'm not sure how many Nancy took with her camera but she was snapping away the whole time too. The morning was misty and somewhat overcast but the afternoon was sunny and peaked around 86f. Beautiful weather to be walking around for us. Though by noon a lot of the critters were holed up and unavailable for photoshoots.

It's a mite steamy out there today. The temp is 92 at 2pm with high humidity and it's supposed to reach 97 today. And thunderstorms in the late afternoon. When the rain hits the pavement it's just gonna turn into steam. *whew* Over there on the left you see a couple of pictures from the NC Zoo from last week. Bison this time. That fellow looks rather moth-eaten. The second picture is of some of his friends. Also rather moth-eaten. And dusty too. Change of topic---last night Cry invited me over to her place for dinner. She saw a Mexican recipe on the All Recipes website that she wanted to try out. The recipe is called Green Chicken Enchilada and it's made using shredded boneless chicken breasts and shredded Monterey Jack cheese wrapped up in flour tortillas with green enchilada sauce covering the bundles as they bake. Very simple and quite good. We were both impressed with how tasty they were especially considering how easy it was to make them. Some Mexican rice on th...

Here's two pictures of faces that I took at the NC Zoo last weekend. The theme also carries over into a TV show I watched last night. Bravo's new reality show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist , had as their first elimination challenge creating a portrait of one of the other contestants in half a day. Most of the 14 contestants were realists but there were a few abstracts as well. How can you do an abstract portrait? "Here's your painting. Just pretend it looks like you." In any case I liked the show. There's a lot of reality shows out there but as far as I know this is the first one that features artists and I found it to be refreshing. Some of the contestants have a lot of experience others are totally unknown. Sometimes you really wonder how they decide which people to pick for these shows. For example, on that Gordon Ramsey show, Hell's Kitchen, everyone smokes---common in the cooking area but is it THAT common?---and they're mostly odd with litt...

I took a bunch of pictures of the ostriches but most of them weren't very interesting. I got lots of blurry pics due to the low light early in the morning. The field with the ostriches was my first stop at 9am. These 3 pictures are okay tho. Here we have a big bird who appears to be small due to its audience of 5 giraffes (the 5th is hiding behind the tree and you can only see the head). The ostrich is keeping its head down and trying not to create trouble. Or I could be anthropomorphizing a bit. I have a number of good pictures of the giraffes. They're much more photogenic, especially in low light. Their fur reflects light a lot better than does the dowdy feathers of the ostriches. What should I name this? Friends of a feather maybe. Or ruffled feathers? Maybe the sky is falling though I think Chicken Little owns that one.

Yesterday I went to the NC state zoo in Asheboro. I got there at 9am, which is when they open, and I stayed until 3pm. I probably walked around 6 miles during those 6 hours, maybe 7 and my calves are a little sore. And I'll tell you, it was damn hot. And humid. It was supposed to hit the low 90s on Sunday and it sure felt like it. Those fellers there on the left are ring tailed lemurs. Lemur Island is the newest attraction at the NC Zoo and they have a number of ring tailed lemurs there and supposedly some red-ruffed lemurs too. The only one I saw stayed semi-hidden under a rock ledge---you can see him in the picture at the bottom of this post. I took a bunch of pictures at the zoo so I'll probably be posting a few more before I get tired of looking at them. :-)

Mom taking a break, with Dad and one of her 3 kits by her side.

I took these pictures at the NC Zoo last Saturday... Pink, Red, and Brown. First Pink then Red and finally Brown

Isn't this critter pretty? I wonder what giraffes think of NC winters? It's got to feel unnatural to them. Today was very sunny and in the high 70s so I'm sure Mr Giraffe was much happier today than last week. There were two things on my agenda for today. Going to the NC Zoo in Asheboro and picking up a new lawn mower. I only got one of those things done. As you can probably tell from the picture above, I did make it to the zoo. Ren and I got there late due to someone oversleeping--apparently she had a bad reaction to BSE and just didn't want to wake up--so we got to the zoo, which is an hour drive from where I live, at 10:45am. We stayed until closing at 5pm so we were on our feet continuously for 6 hours. Our aching dogs! My feet were killing me and Ren was feeling the same way. The accumulated sun exposure from the 6 hours also sapped our endurance. Getting old! This is also why that mower stayed in the store. We just didn't feel like stopping anywhere on the way...

We decided not to go to the zoo today. Between the light dusting of snow and the lasting chill, it just seemed likely that the critters would be holed up and not into the whole posing for pictures act. Tomorrow, while still chilly, won't be nearly as cold and a lot more sunny. Easter at the zoo? Maybe the bunnies will be missing since they'll all be out delivering eggs. (have you ever wondered why it isn't ducks doing that? Why would rabbits have eggs in the first place?) Since I mentioned Evolution yesterday, I thought I'd mention cavemen today. It's a slight stretch as transitions go, but not real extreme. But I'm not going towards the "cavemen as progenitors of us" theme, but rather the Geico version of cavemen. Not exactly cute and cuddly, but still appealing in a very sarcastic way. The reason I bring the Geico cavemen up is that there's an article in this weeks Newsweek Magazine that states that ABC is thinking of creating a half hour sitcom ...

A 3 day weekend is upon us and the cold weather that is hitting the area has caused me to change my plans. I was going to put in a bunch of pretty annuals and maybe change out the shrubs in the front of my house. Due to below overnight freezing weather the next few days I've put that on hold. Instead I'm going to go to the NC Zoo and take pictures of the animals. I went there last September during an unusually hot day and now I'd like to see how everything is during a different season and in cool weather. That cute fellow below is called a Fennec, AKA Desert Fox. I took that picture back in September and look forward to seeing him again. Tonight I'm going to start a new book. I've been reading several books a week lately but haven't felt like writing any reviews. Just the other night I finished The Two Minute Rule by Robert Crais. I understand it's not one of his better books but I thought it was quite good. I hope to get a few books by him out of the libr...

I took these pictures last Fall while visiting the NC Zoo. On the left you can see what appears to be a nice polite ostrich just wandering around. This impression soon turns out to be false when her dowdy tail feathers raise up and reveal a puckered anus. Ewwww! If you look carefully, you can see that she's made a deposit on the ground. More ewwww! Feel free to click on the image to make them bigger. Details can make all the difference in these shots. In other matters, aren't those really bony legs they have? And couldn't they have a little more color?