Article for 2007 Dec 17

2007

2007 Dec

Dec 17 Mon

Then we went to Chester Zoo, where the elephants were playing Musical Statues. Unfortunately, the music wasn’t working, so they were all as still as... well, statues. It was pretty cold.

Second was Lemur Island. A heron was in a fir tree adjacent to the birch (or whatever they are) trees in which lived the lemurs. The lemurs were trying to scare off the heron, without getting in the prickly fir tree... The ducks and seagulls were trying to swim in the water surrounding Lemur Island, but as it was so cold, the water had frozen over so...

Third was the Islands In Danger exhibit, where a very cute baby Komodo dragon was scaling (excuse the wordplay) the walls and ceiling, then finding it couldn’t get down without retracing its steps!

Fourth was the lions and pigeons, although I don’t think the pigeons were part of the exhibit. The lion was eating rabbit. The lioness was eating rabbit. The lion cub was eating rabbit. The pigeons were showing off their bravery.

Fifth was a heron that was pretending to be stuck in the ice.

Sixth was the giraffes and okapi. And eighth was the Tropical Realm, where two Galápagos tortoises were munching lettuce. Did you know that the name Galápagos refers to the shells of tortoises, so Galápagos tortoise, like the Sahara Desert, are literally ‘Tortoise Tortoise’. (‘Sahara’ derives from the Arabic for Desert.) Also in the Realm were cobras and poison-frogs and lizards.

Eleventh was the Spirit of the Jaguar. The jaguar did show itself today. Twelfth were the chimpanzees and orang-utans. Fourteenth was a magpie hopping on the grass outside the orang-utan enclosure.

The fifteenth (yes, fifteenth) exhibit was the shop. I got a souvenir of a toy eagle. I’ve named it Eaglet. I’ve also made a name-tag for it.