To the Zoo!

It has been about two weeks now since we went to the zoo. I know I promised a blog about it awhile ago, but I haven’t gotten to it. I have a good excuse though. School and work are keeping me quite busy. Tonight I decided to do a quick post using a few of the pictures I took. I’m not going to do every single picture, because, well, it’s already pretty late, and I want to do some minimal editing on them so they don’t look like your run-of-the-mill “We went to the zoo and took pictures!” type photos. You know, the ones where all the animals are little blobs far off in the distance. I’m sure everyone has had the experience of taking what you thought were brilliant pictures of all the amazing animals you saw at the zoo, only to get home and find that the pictures in your head are far superior to the ones in your camera. I remember when I was a little kid and dad gave me my first camera. I took it with us to the zoo, and took pictures of all the most beautiful animals there. (Mainly Giraffes and Zebras) I was convinced I had amazing photographs on my camera. I’m not sure where those amazing photographs went to, but somehow, the photograph developers switched out my amazing wildlife photos for some horrible pictures with tiny far off animals, blurry snapshots, and pictures of somebody’s fingers. I was not happy. These days I take better photos, but unfortunately to get them, I also have to take about a million terrible ones, and weed through and edit them all. People who think photography is as easy as pointing and shooting, are not the people who get their pictures on the cover of National Geographic. Great photography is hard work. Hopefully someday it will get easier…
Anyway, I’d like to share a few pictures that I’ve already edited, and if there’s time, I my do another blog post about all our little green visitors we’ve been having the last few months. No, they are not aliens.

Awe! Look at the adorable little bloodsucker! Actually, I don’t know if that was a vampire bat or not. It may have been a fruitbat. Either way, it’s one of the ugly squashed faced deformed nosed ones that I hate. I like the cute ones like flying foxes and others like them. This picture was taken in the Kingdoms of the Night exhibit under the Desert Dome. It was almost pitch black in there except for some minimal lighting so that you could find your way around, and so that you could tell that there was actually some animals in there. I used my flash to get this picture. I’m not sure if that was allowed or not. I’ll bet the bats didn’t appreciate it though…

Can you spot the subject of the photo? This one was once one of those pictures where you couldn’t even tell what I had taken a picture of. Thank goodness for digital cameras and editing software! In case anyone out there can’t tell, this is an alligator. Just his eyes and nostrils are above the surface of the water. This was also in the nocturnal exhibit, but there was a little more light in this area.

Another photo ruined taken with the flash. This was also taken in the dark, so I had no choice but to use the flash. I tried my best to fix it, but I’m not the greatest with editing software yet. This is a photo of a tawny frogmouth. They look similar to owls, but they are not owls at all. They get their name from the size of their mouths. They are pretty huge when they open them up. They mostly eat insects but they have been known to eat mice and other small animals. They even eat their namesakes. Apparently they catch them in their beaks and then beat them on a rock to kill them. Poor Kermit.

Lets get out into the sun for the next few pictures. In case you are wondering, these are not in any order. I’m just randomly posting a few pictures. The ones above are actually some of the last pictures I took that day.

This cute little guy is a gibbon. No, it is not a monkey. I am constantly amazed by how many people think that apes are monkeys. No tails people! Apes have no tails!
*Tiny rant over*

And now a picture of the most beautiful animal ever to walk the earth. I think I will dedicate an entire blog post to giraffes later on.

And if I do one on giraffes I will have to do one on Okapis as well. I want one of each for my very own!

While we were there a hideous creature escaped from its cage and flew up into the rafters. Well, actually it was a sculpture, but the escaped monster story sounds so much more exciting!

This is a grey crowned crane. While we were there, mom overheard a little kid exclaiming to his mother that he just saw a bird with a mohawk.

I think that’s going to be it for this post. I have lots more pictures though, so I will have more soon. Hopefully sooner than two weeks… Well, I had better get this published. It is almost midnight, and I still had planned to get one more blog done concerning our amphibious basement invaders.