Well, I Otter...

Eryn and I went to the Otter Encounter at the MN Zoo.  Unlike the Penguin Encounter, which she went to with her mom, you don't get to touch the animals in the Otter Encounter.  I think it has something to do with the otters being five feet long, up to 100 pounds, and having a mouth full of very sharp teeth.  Not something you get with your average zoo penguin, not even the toughs they're harboring from the Minot Zoo.

The nice thing about being at the encounter on a school day was we were the only two individuals present.  So we had the otter, two zookeepers, and two zoo interns all to ourselves.  They answered all sorts of questions about otter distribution, otter impacts from runoff in California (might be cat liter), where otters hide their food (in their armpits), and much more.

You do get to put out food for them while they hang out in the pen next door.  This is a sled covered in ground clam for Capers the Sea Otter.  You can tell how excited Eryn is to touch ground clam.



I also learned that otters can stand on their webbed feet.  Most of the time, Capers slithered all over the place, but the zookeepers assured me he was just being lazy.


Back to putting out the food.  We got to hide it all over the place.  I felt pretty smart lifting up the big block of ice, which I could barely move with one hand, and stuffing a clam popsicle under there were it would be hard to find.


When he found it under the ice, he just put a paw under it and flipped it up.  Effortlessly.  Then he threw the iceberg in the water, slipped in, picked it up in his paws, and slammed it repeatedly against the edge of the cement until pieces broke off.  Just a bit strong than your average penguin.  We were also told that sea otters don't have a layer of blubber, so they spend a lot of time eating.  Up to 25% of their body weight in a day.  The storage area in their arm pits is so they can collect food for a while before lounging on their backs for a varied meal.


Capers liked to throw overly cold food in the water for a while, giving it a chance to thaw while he looked for additional goodies.


We did get to handfeed him through the plexiglass holes.


You get pretty close to those teeth.  But he's more interested in the clam popsicles than in anyone's fingers.


Posing with Capers the Otter.


He wants another clamstick, Eryn!  The zookeeper says post-encounter is big time nap time, they're generally so stuffed with food by that point.


Eryn posing with Capers the Sea Otter.  I made an animated gif out of this photo, but Eryn was moving, so it wasn't as funny as if it had just been the otter flipping his head back and forth.  I could cut the pictures and do it without Eryn, or splice her half of the photo into both halves of Capers' photos to keep her still.  If I get around to that, I'll post it.


This had nothing to do with otters.  But it was how I ended my trip to the zoo for the day.  I think the little bear is trying to look around me.  Eryn thinks he's sniffing my butt.

Chicago - Lincoln Park Zoo

While we were in Chicago, we walked from our hotel to the Lincoln Park Zoo.  It was a bit cold for the animals to be out,but plenty of them were visible anyway.  This camel was obsessed with chewing on the chain for his ball.  We were speculating whether it was because he enjoyed how cold the chain was or because he was grinding his teeth.


After seeing the gibbon swinging back and forth with his junk waving in the air in front of us, coupled with the breast feeding gibbon, Kyle told me I should get a monkey of my own.  I disagree.  Smart pets scare me.  And the sign on the monkey cafeteria (where they make vegetable pizzas for monkeys, not where you eat monkey) had many things to say about why only idiots and selfish bastards kept domesticated monkeys.  It was amusing that they spent a lot of time clarifying they were referring to "non-human primate ownership".


Apparently people were VERY concerned when the tigers jumped down into their moat.  The zoo keeper had to put up a sign to assure people this was normal and they shouldn't panic or worry it was going to be able to come up the other side and eat them.


Obviously authorized zoo personnel are Oompa Loompas.


I like this picture.  It was taken through a fake camera with a real camera that captured my reflection in the fake camera, but the real rhinoceros in the real camera via the fake camera's real lens tube.  Makes for a neat shot.


This screams for one of those triptychs where you get closer and closer and closer to the giraffe's face so it feels like he's upset with you.  But he looks a little too simple to be an evil giraffe.


F*** are ostriches ugly and stupid looking.  This sort of behavior doesn't help at all.


This would be part I of the triptych.  I had a very nice picture off just a giraffe ass which could have been picture #3, but I got rid of it as it was in poor taste.  Who really wants to look at that?

Cheeseburger in Paradise

Tall Brad asks the question on his blog, "How did you spend your President's Day?" I spent part of mine with him and his family, wandering around the overly crowded Minnesota Zoo after an early breakfast at the St. Clair Broiler (which included Ming and Mean Mr. Mustard).

Here are some things I got to see at the zoo that Tall Brad didn't get to appreciate.

Koreans have big nuts and if they want to keep them, they should stay away from bears and boars.


Tiger friendly products are coming soon. Like this gun. Which you can use to hunt furries dressed as tigers, or the cast of The Lion King. Because furries embarrass real tigers.


Brad was even in the vicinity when I took this movie. This is a guy playing Cheeseburger in Paradise on the steel drums. His audience? About 80 children in a giant sandbox. The economy is tough, and you should take the gigs you can get, but I bet this wasn't his original career aspiration.