Category: conservation ftw
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Learn a new animal day! Siamang edition.
I’m going to give you a leg up on the average zoo visitor today and teach you about this animal: Thoughts? Well, on a typical day while cleaning/feeding around this animal, I hear the following on a regular basis: “Look at the monkey!” “I love it when that howler monkey yells!” “(Name of small child),…
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Why I love zoos
It’s because you can get this close. When you’re that close, you start to understand and care about things and the world looks a little bit different. And I didn’t have to go to Africa to see how they move and how long their eyelashes are and how they lean down to look at things.
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Why I love manatees
Who has noticed my little button over on the right that says “I love manatees” yet? Anyone? I do love manatees. I saw my first manatees (that I remember) when I was nine and we moved to Florida. They look like big gray pillows with tails just floating beneath the surface of the green water,…
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Thursday night…
Today was another zoo day. I wound up cleaning out the giraffe barn which is a lot more fun in practice than it sounds on here, I guarantee. Giraffes are very cool animals and I was entertained by the one that kept leaning around to look at what I was doing (from the outside of…
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Zoo Routines
I realized while getting ready for bed that I didn’t blog today… so I’m blogging today. It’s still technically today for me, so it counts. Really. Today was another zoosday Tuesday. The weather was weird today, though. First is was drizzly and then it was hot and sunny and then out of nowhere it poured…
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Moonlight Ukuleles
As the air cools slightly and the sun drifts toward Waianae on Wednesdays in the summer, the zoo closes down for five minutes. After those five minutes, the gates reopen and the zoo lawn is transformed into a picnic ground, a play field and an amphitheater. Wednesday night, the zoo becomes the Wildest Show. Every…
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The Tail-end of Whale Season
While my company was here visiting, we were out at the beach whale watching and noticed a whale breaching repeatedly. This happens sometimes, and if you sit there long enough there’s a decent chance you’ll see a breach. What we didn’t expect was this: The colloquial name for this is a “heat run,” though it…
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Whale Census
This weekend was the February Whale Count. Since we had a tsunami the weekend before, it was postponed. My day consisted of getting up around 5am, getting ready (including packing a bag with snacks, water, sun screen, sunglasses, a hat, etc) and heading out before sunrise to the Lanai Lookout, which is a spot on…
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Thoughts on Captive Carnivores
I want to start by saying I have been to SeaWorld twice in my life, once as a child and once as an adult (last spring). I have seen the show and the environment but am by no means an expert on whale behavior so please keep that in mind. That being said, for years…
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Rainy Zoosday
Today it is raining. Not the usual light drizzle for thirty minutes and then gone sort of rain, but the it’s going to pour all day long whether you like it or not sort of rain. This kind of rain is the kind that’s usually associated with a certain Irishman, whom I have yet to…
Joanna Volavka 