Vacation Day Five. I slept in a tiny bit today and didn’t get up until about 7:15. I did my morning ablutions stuff and put a pot of coffee on to brew before settling in to a light breakfast. Around 8:45 or so, I headed over to the Sacramento Zoo for my walk. The weather was perfect: sunny, breezy, in the 60’s.
I mostly wanted to see the new baby Red River Hogs’ quadruplet hoglets and I wasn’t disappointed. Just as I got to their pen, their keeper let them out into their run so she could clean their barn area. It was hard getting still shots of the babies because they move so fast, so I took some video of them, too. At one point, one of the babies must’ve accidentally nipped mama’s tee-tee because she gave it a hard bite on the back to make it stop. It just stood there for a little bit, like it was stunned and embarrassed. Poor little thing. Hah!
Hoglets Videos: https://youtu.be/oRgp5T86s94 and https://youtu.be/rrmDlpGkOu8
The two American White Pelicans they have there are in the breeding season, so they’re super territorial. There are picnic tables outside the zoo’s restaurant that are right near the fence where the Pelicans hang out. There were signs all over the place telling people not to get to close to the fence because the Pelicans might come after them… so, of course, everyone went up to the fence and drove the Pelicans crazy.
I got to see all of the big cats except the Tiger today. Their female tiger was killed by their male tiger in February when the zoo introduced them to one another. The male tiger, Mohan, is now being kept of exhibit. The zoo hasn’t decided what to do with him: if they’ll keep him, send him to another zoo, or have him put down… The male Snow Leopard was out in his enclosure and sat right next to the fence eating grass and sharpening his claws on the tree stumps. So beautiful… The adult lions were out but their cubs weren’t. Mama and papa just sat, basking in the early morning sun… And I got to see the Jaguar today, which is kind of rare; he hardly ever make an appearance. He recently injured his tail somehow and it had to be amputated, so he has a little bob-tail now…
All of the adult giraffes were out except for the one who just had a baby. I asked one of the docents when the baby giraffe might go on exhibit, and she said it was really up to the baby’s mom. She’ll lead him out when she feels well enough to handle it – and when he is confident enough to be safe around the larger adults. Maybe a week or two…
At the flamingo pen there were a lot of duck sharing their space, including several female Mallards with broods od fuzzy ducklings. So cute!
Around 11 o’clock I stopped for lunch at the café inside the zoo and had a burger, fries and Bud Light. Then I went to the reptile house and the souvenir shop before heading out. In the reptile house, I got there just as one of the keepers was feeding the Smooth-fronted Caiman. They try to train the critters to go where they want them to go when they feed them, and the Caiman was kind of stubborn at first. The keeper wanted him to go into a white plastic carry-box to get his mice, and he was just not happy about that. He tried snapping the mice away from her without going into the box – she held them out on long tongs to him – but eventually decided that was too much work I guess and he complied. I got some videos of that exchange, too.
Caiman Videos: https://youtu.be/ab1aCkbJ3Rs and https://youtu.be/McliNbycfnM
At the souvenir shop I got some t-shirts. I was looking for a new fluffy-animal keychain (because mine is getting pretty ratty-looking) but they had sold out of them, so I’ll have to again some other time. After that I went home and crashed with the dogs.
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