Tibor the tiger keeping an eye on the keeper with the bucket of meat.

Anyway, I watched the cats for a while. And I got to see the binturongs, which are crazy, strange creatures with awesome big fat tails. They’re usually well-hidden, but last night one of them was just kind of sitting in full view. I went over to see the tapirs, but they were all asleep in a pile inside as usual. So then I stood and watched the rhinos eat their dinner for about 20 minutes.

Usually in zoos, you can tell which animals are pretty content. I guess it’s the nature of being in a zoo, but a lot of animals just aren’t in love with being in an enclosure, regardless of how good it is or how big it is. They pace around in the same patterns and are probably just generally a bit bored. Even if they’re happily bored (like the sea lions sometimes appear to be). But the rhinos at Edinburgh Zoo always look like they’re enjoying the hell out of themselves. There are two of them, and I think they’re brothers. The enclosure isn’t particularly enormous, but every time I go, they’re just happily going about their rhino business. One time, they were charging back and forth through an enormous puddle of thick mud, splashing everyone watching with big blobs of the stuff, and clearly having the time of their lives. Last night, they were thoroughly enjoying munching on some enormous tree branches. And it wasn’t crowded at all, so I just got to stand there on my own with the rhinos for ages. I guess that wouldn’t be too exciting for some people, but I like watching happy animals do normal stuff. Their life is easy. It calms me down. Plus, they were making some awesome smacking noises with their ears as they tried to keep the flies off. You can kind of hear it in this video I took.

I went to have a look at the penguins next so I could see all the just-hatched gentoos. You can watch them on the penguin cam. The penguins were all squawking at and chasing a crow who was trying to poke around for food. That was kind of funny. When I had enough of that, I went to try to see the skunks, which are never out, and they weren’t out last night either. I spotted the porcupines waaaaaay up in the top of a tree though. And then I went home wishing something like a tree branch would make me as happy as the rhinos.

Look at me! I'm brand new and fluffy!

]]> http://chocolatecakeandbeer.com/2011/06/25/happy-animals/feed/ 0 Kate Tibor Baby gentoo http://chocolatecakeandbeer.com/2011/02/07/new-cards-and-prints-available/ http://chocolatecakeandbeer.com/2011/02/07/new-cards-and-prints-available/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:09:05 +0000 Kate http://www.chocolatecakeandbeer.com/?p=369 ]]> I’ve posted new notecards and 3 prints at various price levels over on Etsy. Prices on older stuff have also come down a bit, so have a look.

6 awesome animal notecards.

I’ll be replacing the images with better ones as soon as I get some sunshine in this place. Unfortunately, we don’t have great lighting for this kind of photography in our flat, and the weekend was dreary, so I took what I could get.

This is my favourite! There's no yellow discolouration on the bottom right, that's just bad lighting.

I’m working on more new stuff slowly but surely. I’m thinking of printing a few things on little pocket moleskines. I tried it with the green giraffe print on an extra book I had leftover from another project, and it looks pretty cool. Also, printing on fabric if I ever get my act together.

Oh, and PS, that cheese popcorn I talked about in a previous post? Kind of weird, yet strangely addictive. It’s not a cheddar-type cheese, more of a swiss-type. A little too salty though. I’ll stick to stovetop popcorn I think.

What's goin' on over in this pen?

Over the past two weekends, we’ve seen a lot of animals. Two weeks ago, we went to the Royal Highland Show, where there were a lot of large, happy cows, curious goats, fluffy sheep, and gigantic Clydesdales, one of which tried to read Scott’s map, and another of which was hoping a lick of the grass design on my shirt would produce the taste of the real thing. Poor guy. I did give him a pat on the nose, but I don’t think it was any consolation.

Do you have an apple?

I also got to make a fool of myself as a volunteer in a demonstration called Quack Commandos, in which the awesomeness of sheepdogs is displayed by getting one of them to herd some Indian Running Ducks in all sorts of directions and then getting 6 humans to try and do the same job. Needless to say, the dog kind of kicked our asses. But how many people can say they’ve herded Indian Running Ducks? I bet you can’t.

Sheepdog: takin' care of bidness.

Humans: not so much.

In addition to the animals, there was a crapload of free food sampling going on, some scrumptious strawberries and cream, and various other snacking. I also saw a guy scale a 40 foot pole in 17 seconds. And Scott drooled over big boy toys like combine harvesters and tractors, forgetting completely that we don’t have any fields to mow and a combine harvester is about one and a half times the size of our flat.

Regardless of this, walking around looking at animals all day just makes me want a farm full of them even more. I could make a lot of cheese and ice cream.

We can't carry that home.

Ok, I realise this is actually quite important stuff in animal husbandry and all, but it's still funny.

Puffin proof.

More recently, this weekend, we headed out to South Queensferry far too early in the morning for a Sunday to catch an RSPB seabird cruise. There were seals! And puffins! And cormorants! And about ten billion different kinds of gulls! It was pretty good, and it only rained for about 15 minutes of the 3 hours. My camera was no match for some of the telephoto lenses on that boat, but I got a few decent pictures of the seals, and I managed to get some pictures that at least prove we saw puffins. They’re really small!

Seals!

After the boat trip was over, naturally, the sun came out in full and we walked around South Queensferry for a bit, had a mediocre sunday roast in one pub and a pint in another before heading home. Lovely way to spend a day.

Sunny South Queensferry.

Somewhere in between these animal excursions, I went shopping for clothes, which I desperately need. Unfortunately, after failing to find anything I liked or deemed appropriate, I gave up and instead came home with three new CDs (M.I.A., Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Coldplay. Hooray new music!), a bottle of Cava (It was hot and I wanted something cold and fizzy.), and a new Tefal Jamie Oliver Professional Series stainless steel 30cm nonstick omlette pan. YES.

Retired (but still pretty hot).

Sex-ehhhhh.

To put this in perspective, I used this pan’s predecessor, a similar one, hard anodized instead of stainless steel,  just about every day for two and a half years. I don’t drive anymore because I live in a city, but I do cook all the time. So this is kind of like the equivalent of buying a new car. It will be used and used well. And DAMN it is nice. I like when cookware goes on sale.

Unfortunately, I still need clothes. This ‘no clothes, so let’s buy food/something for the kitchen’ thing is all too common of an occurance. I blame the fashion industry. But that’s another post.