Where the Wild Things Are

A slower morning than the last few days. Were I going strictly for a pun I'd point out that the reason is that I opted not to go running. However, I also slept in more than I have been and got up about 8:30. I made some coffee and read my book until Martha came down, and then I ate with her. We finish morning by rousing Margaret and finishing the last 10-20 minutes of The Little Mermaid (such a great movie!).

Anyway... Martha headed out to work again and Margaret and I headed out for a walk to the train station. Pleasant sunrise... tickets were half off cause it was Sunday. Anyway, we hopped on the Upfield Line which took us north and out of the city, towards Royal Park... the home of the Royal Melbourne Zoo. (I meant to say at some point in this intro that it broke 100 degrees today.)

We got in with ease and planned to do a giant loop of the zoo... to see all the animals. We started out with some lucky timing as we got to see the Peccaries be fed. They look amazingly like warthogs, and are apparently rather fierce... so not even the zookeepers enter their pen. We then started walking around the lemur's "island" and enjoyed seeing the "big cats" exhibit. Yes, yes... I know that nobody is surprised that I loved seeing the cats... but they were soooo pretty. We saw snow leopards (my favorite)... 3 of them in different pens... and lions. Wherever the puma was he was well hidden... Anyway, the snow leopards looked unpleasantly hot, but sol cute. One was sleeping on its back near the cage wall... and I really wanted to go pet him (I refrained but bet he was soft...). Some of their positions looked like Kibo when he crashes. They were a highlight. (The lions looked more...prepared... for the weather, but were also sleeping).

We then went through the aquatic bit, which had a nice long refreshing indoor bit. We saw some pelicans, fur seals and little penguins. The seals were interesting and seemed to by unscathed by the heat. The interesting thing (as we watched them play) is that I think they were all rescues as they all had some pretty severe scarring. The penguins were all hiding under a rowboat together. It was nice to see them cause I think they were the same little blue penguins that we saw in New Zealand.

We then went through a number of tree climbing creatures... aka monkeys of carious kinds... they were what you'd expect. But I got some decent views of red pandas which are cute and i'm usually unsuccessful in heaving even the slightest view of them. There was also a pair of tree kangaroos, and they were pretty adorable.

We had a brief stint in the butterfly/insect exhibit... and, Margaret got extrema hereby jeebies. It was a bit funny to see, though she recovered in good time. We also saw a cute pair of otters, who we watched get fed. They seemed more clever than I thought they would be, as they each reacted when shown the empty feeding bucket. Apparently once one actually kicked a rock and sulked.

We ended the trip with the loop that saw us the kangaroos. They were all sleepy but we could get very close to them. This was followed up by a brief trip through the reptiles and snakes... and there were a lot of snakes... but they were not too exciting (though pretty).

Anyway, we returned to Martha's place where we hid in the air conditioning a bit to recoup. We munched on the leftover pasta salad for a while, and that turned out to be quite sufficient for dinner. When Martha returned from work we watched Beauty and the Beast (another great movie) while she had some pasta salad too. Then when the movie ended we headed out to "Little Creatures", a local bar for desserts and a drink. We had some doughnuts...and they were delicious.

Tomorrow should be hot too, but we'll come up with something...

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