Day. It’s the New Night!

School takes too much time. I seem to have no time for blogging lately… I was planning to post this a few days ago, but school got in the way…

Anyway, almost two weeks ago now, I went to the zoo. This is nothing unusual, my photography club meets there once a month. What WAS unusual, was that I had to be there at EIGHT IN THE MORNING. The zoo is in Omaha. I am in Harlan. That is over an hour away. It’s bad enough that the club meets at nine. That means getting up at seven. This month I had to get up at six. It was awful. I almost died. Not really.

So I get there wondering what this was all about and I find out that we are going to the Kingdoms of the Night exhibit. That’s the nocturnal exhibit underneath the Desert Dome, in case you’ve never been to the Henry Doorly Zoo. Why would we go to the zoo two hours before they open to visit the nocturnal exhibit? Because at eight o’clock the “Sun” hasn’t set yet. All the exhibits were still bright as day. Have you ever been in a cave that is fully lit? I have.

It was so cool to actually be able to take pictures in there. I have hardly ever been able to get good pictures down there.

With almost no lights it is pretty much impossible to take pictures anywhere in any of the nocturnal exhibits, unless you use a flash, and then your pictures look horrible.

The only bad thing about the morning was, as this was the nocturnal exhibit’s “Daytime,” most of the animals were sleeping.

I feel so bad for those Springhaas. I mean, how would you like to share your bed with a porcupine?

Even with the lights on I still didn’t get a very good picture of the giant salamander. This beast is huge and weird looking, but he’s never in a position where I can get a really great photo of him. This is the best I could do.

If you look very close you can see lots of little animals all over this exhibit. All asleep.

This is a Prehensile Tailed Porcupine. I’ll bet most of you didn’t even know there was such a thing. Now you do. :)

This one is for you mom. :p Isn’t he cute? :)

The best part was going through the swamp.

The reason?

I FINALLY got some good pictures of this guy! I have never been able to photograph the white alligator before, but with the lights on it was easy!

I have a few more pictures, but I will save them for my photo blog, and I will try to get them up tonight.

It was fun to photograph the other photographers as well.

After I got to the end I went back to the beginning because I never saw one of my favorite animals, the Aardvarks. And I never saw them even when I went back. They must have either been off display, or they had a really good hiding spot to sleep in. Aardvarks are pretty big, so I know I didn’t just pass them by.

As I went back, the lights started going dim since it was almost 9 in the morning, and the Naked Mole Rat display started to look really cool.

I’ll spare you any photos of the actual animals since they are pretty much the ugliest animal ever to walk the earth. (Rufus the Naked Mole Rat on Kim Possible is an exception, but he doesn’t count since he’s a cartoon) Plus, I never got any clear shots of them, otherwise I probably would post one. :p

Back at the beginning it was “Sunset.” The Springhaas and Brushtail Porcupines were just starting to wake up, but I didn’t have time to take any more pictures. I had to get to the meeting.

And that was my adventure. I took more photos in the jungle after my meeting, but I’m saving those pictures for my photography blog.

Frogs

Apparently the window well outside my bedroom window attracts Frogs. I kept hearing something outside my window at night, hitting it. That was rather creepy. I finally heard it during the day and saw this.

It was huge, and apparently it couldn’t get out. There was a big piece of wood that it could have jumped onto and then jumped out, but I guess frogs aren’t smart enough to figure that out. I was going to have Joel climb down and rescue it, but it disappeared. I thought maybe it had finally escaped, but I heard it at night again. It must have been hiding in all the weeds. The next day I got a couple more pictures.

I was going to tell Joel, but I forgot that day, and I didn’t hear it that night. It turned out it had died. :( We wept bitterly. Not really. :p

Then a couple nights later I saw something on the window.

I don’t think this one will have any trouble escaping. :)

I wonder what else will find its way down there?

To the Zoo with Matthew

This month, instead of going to the zoo alone, I went with my friend Matthew. We had a great time and visited a few places I had never gone before. I have a ton of pictures, as usual. I will be doing my regular post here, and then I will also be doing posts of my more “Artistic” (In my opinion anyway) pictures on my photo blog.

This little frog cracked me up. I’m not sure what exactly he was looking for. :)

I finally got a better picture of this female parrot.

There were docents walking around the Animal Kingdom Pavilion with animals for people to pet. I petted this ball python. It was a lot warmer than one would imagine. Snakes are cold blooded, but that doesn’t mean they’re cold to the touch.

Peacocks all over the place, as usual.

They were really shrieking that morning.

If it were legal to own an okapi, I would. How could anyone NOT love that face? :)

I hadn’t realized the zoo had two okapis! I wonder if they just got the second one. It is fenced off from the main one.

I took a ton of pictures of the okapi. I will do an entirely separate post on my photo blog just about him.

This hornbill was pretty crazy. He kept running all around the fence trying to get people to feed him.

Blogger is not wanting to publish my post, it may be that I have too many pictures, so I am going to have to split up this post into more than one. Be on the lookout for part two soon!

A View From the Zoo

I had to get 40 pictures chosen and edited for Monday’s class this week. Considering that I was gone all day Saturday, and on Sunday I had projects to work on for both Comp 2 and Drawing 2, I was very cramped for time. Guess what time I went to bed on Sunday night.
1 AM?
No. Try again.
2?
Nope.
3?
Not even close. It was a trick question. I didn’t go to bed. I finished my Comp 2 paper and submitted it around 11. I then worked for about two hours cutting out shapes for a printing plate. (That project will be featured later after I’m completely finished with it.) After that I started in on my photos. I may have fallen asleep at my computer around 2 or 3 I’m not really sure. Anyways, I was woken up by the sound of dad getting his coat out of the closet right behind me at about 4:30. I started back to work immediately and I finished sometime between 6 &7. If anyone tells you taking pictures is an easy job, don’t believe them. There is so much more to photography than pointing a camera and pushing a button.
So, would you like to see what I stayed up all night working on? I still have lots of pictures to go through, but I have some ready to share right now, so I might as well post some. I don’t want to put them all in one post anyway, the upload time would take hours with our tortoise-like internet connection.
After I got out of the club meeting there was a girl doing animal demonstrations. I was in the Mutual of Omaha building so long, that I got to see two different shows. The first one was a Scarlet Macaw.

He was not very well behaved.

I have so many picture of this guy, I think I’ll come back another day with a whole post just about him.

I really liked this starfish. He was just hangin’ out, chillin’ on his seaweed leaf.

These were really interesting. They are called Cairo Spiny Mice. Instead of fur they have little spines. I’d never heard of them before.

This is a Chinese Crocodile Lizard. I am going to try to get some better pictures of him in the future. I didn’t get any that really did him justice. He’s very cool looking.

This is a Dwarf Surinam Toad. It’s so weird looking but I kind of like him anyway. He looks like a tiny little slimy alien bear.

This is a File-Eared Tree Frog. if you look closely you can see the ridges that extend over the ear, which, according to a website I found, is an external eardrum. I have never heard of an external eardrum before.

This is a robin. I saw him outside.

I’m not really sure what this is, but he looks cool anyway.

This is a bluebird.
>Snicker, snicker<

I love these anemones.

They’re so cool looking.

I have a ton of pictures of him as well. I have a separate post planned all about him.

look! Two more bluebirds!

I love the color of this Sea Urchin.

This shrimp was bigger than my hand.

There’s a whole flock of turkeys running wild around the zoo. Just like the flock of bluebirds.

This guy just sat in the window watching everyone. He never moved. I think we were as entertaining to him as he was to us.

I love seahorses. They are so cute.

There is a flock of doves that live down by the domestic animal barns. When they all burst into flight at once, I was so mad I didn’t have my camera ready. It would have made an awesome shot.

These are called upside-down jellies. Apparently they are jellyfish that are just too lazy to get up and swim.

I don’t even remember taking this shot, but I think it turned out really great.

I’ll end with this fantastic shot of a bluebird butt.