Tuesday, April 13, 2004

And Now For Something Completely Different…

Last week we went to the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, MA, part of the Zoo New England group which includes the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.  We hadn’t been there in a few years and found it much changed - for the better!

There are many more enclosures than there used to be and everything has a feel of renewal and renovation.  The last time we visited, things were definitely shabby - not that the animals were in bad shape; just that there weren’t many of them and the whole place seemed old and tired.  Not any more!  Things are considerably spruced up and the resident population has more than doubled.

Male Jaguar

Female Jaguar

This pair was amazing to watch.  Most of the enclosures are sturdy chain and wire fencing but some of them, like this one, had plexiglass shields through which the animals could be viewed (and photographed) more directly.

I had never seen jaguars so closely before and these two were magnificent.  It was very entertaining to note that, issues of size and strength aside, they acted very much like my own house-sized cats do.  The female was is heat and she would stroll by the male, brushing him with her rear end as she passed, and flop down on the ground a couple of feet away.  There she would wriggle enticingly and when the male approached to get “friendly”, she’d whack him and move just out of range.  Then they’d do it all over again - exactly the same sort of thing I’ve observed in regular tabbies.  There were lots of children in the zoo that day and I amused myself by wondering how their mothers would react should the female jaguar decide that she was going to be receptive after all!

There were also, in separate enclosures, a pair of cougars and a pair of snow leopards.  All of them were in the peak of health and strength and I imagine all are part of breeding programs designed to help remedy depleted numbers of these creatures in the wild.

Sheep, Yak and Llamas - Wool on the hoof!

There were some tamer species as well.  I imagine when the spring is well on, some of these folks will be come part of a small “petting” zoo.  Probably not the yak though...he charged me at the fence when I first tried to take his picture.  Camera shy - eh, I can sympathize :)

Then there was this colorful bugger -

Is this my color?  I thought I was more of a winter...

I’ve seen lots of flamingos before but never any as brilliant as this!  Talk about glad rags!  If I could just find yarn in that color (with a bit of turquoise to set it off)!  And the funniest thing is that flamingo babies, when they hatch, are great, ungainly balls of grey fluff.

River Otters

We stood the longest at this enclosure.  These guys are so engaging and so much fun to watch!  They were snoozing when we first arrived, but eventually woke up and decided it was time for a swim.  The female is lighter in color and a bit smaller than the male and the zoo attendant told us they had an awful time convincing the pair to get together.  For a long time, neither wanted anything to do with the other.  It appeared, as of last Thursday, that they had resolved their differences :)

Coyote Beautiful

This fellow is one of a litter of nine pups found in Falmouth out on Cape Cod.  I know, intellectually, that coyotes are everywhere now, but there’s still a bit of cognitive dissonance when I hear of them in Massachusetts.  They should be out in the badlands of Utah and such - and no doubt they are.  This is the nicest looking coyote I’ve ever seen.  If you can catch sight of them in the wild, they generally look pretty moth-eaten.

Mexican Gray Wolf

This girl was my absolute favorite.  I hadn’t hoped to see a Mexican Gray as they’re still pretty scarce.  The fact is if the foliage had been out, I probably wouldn’t have seen her at all; wolves are pretty shy around humans.  But there she was, just beautiful!  She was also one of a breeding pair.

The zoo has a lot of animals I couldn’t take pictures of.  Oh, I tried - and wound up with lots of very clear shots of chain link fence and reflections of the camera flash. 

There were three young hyacinth macaws - beautiful, brilliant blue birds that came running over to the window as soon as we appeared.  Clearly these guys had been hand-raised.  People=being fed.  They also got up as close to the glass as they could and bent their heads over so their beaks were touching the ground.  Any of you who have parrots or budgies will know they were asking for a neck scratch.  I wish I could have obliged! 

There was an enclosure of flying foxes, largest of the bats.  They’re about 10” long, weigh between three and five pounds, and they really do look like foxes with their pointed little snouts and their big pointed ears.  Of course foxes don’t have hooks for hands and feet and they lack that 6 foot-plus wingspan :) We watched these guys eating their lunch; they are strict vegetarians and eat mostly fruit with a few plants and leaves thrown in for variety.  The fruit was cut into rough wedges, impaled on a spike and hung from the ceiling.  Each bat had his own spike of fruit.

Then there were the mountain goats.  I got a couple of very clear shots of them - all with their backsides to the camera.  Think they were trying to tell me something?

I expect we’ll try to get to Franklin Park sometime later this spring or summer.  We haven’t been there in 12 years or so, mostly because of the drive through Boston.  But it’s time to re-visit!

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1. I love the picture of the otter!

   Posted by Gail  on  04/14  at  05:01 PM
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2. Hi Gail!  They were awfully cute!

   Posted by Robbyn  on  04/14  at  08:12 PM
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3. LOVELY animal pics! Thank you so much!!!

   Posted by Stasia  on  04/14  at  10:33 PM
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4. Thanks, Stasia!  I’m not much of a photographer, but with such beautiful subjects, I can’t help but try anyway.  And sometimes I get lucky :)

   Posted by Robbyn  on  04/14  at  11:06 PM
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5. Love the animal portraits, Robbyn.  The wolf and jaguar are magnificent. I have mixed feelings about zoos, but they are a wonderful way to get up close to animals you would never normally see plus most zoos nowadays are very enlightened in their attitudes.

   Posted by  on  04/15  at  07:14 AM
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6. Hi Anne!  Thanks (blush) - I’m particularly pleased with those two myself.  I share your ambivalent feelings about zoos.  Most of them are pretty enlightened these days in their ideas about how to design an enclosure for the animal’s comfort and well-being.  And once I realized that the fences (wires, etc.) are there as much to protect the animal from un-enlightened humans as for any other reason, I was able to relax a bit about it.

   Posted by Robbyn  on  04/15  at  10:08 AM
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