At the Milwaukee County Zoo yesterday.
Seen
Category Archives: zoos
Field trip
My older daughter and I visited the Lincoln Park Conservatory and the Lincoln Park Zoo on Friday. The conservatory has always been one of my favorite spots in the city, an under-appreciated treasure.
Holiday magic
A small twin-spot octopus.
For more than twenty years with only a few exceptions, my family has visited either the Brookfield Zoo or the Milwaukee County Zoo on Thanksgiving and / or Christmas. This year, we were particularly interested in seeing the koala bears at Brookfield, so on Tuesday I checked the website to ensure their habitat would be open — and learned that the zoo is now closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Just like that, a tradition ended.
We visited on Friday for Holiday Magic, an event that was a pale imitation of previous iterations.
Not too bright
At Brookfield Zoo.
Yesterday I learned that koalas possess practically grooveless brains. With one of the smallest brain-to-body-mass ratios in mammals, koalas cannot decide or conclude; their cognitive abilities are all but nonexistent. Apparently, they can’t even recognize eucalyptus leaves as food if the leaves have been stripped from the branches.
But, gosh, are they cute.
After seeing the koalas, I had hoped to visit Hitchcock Poe* the raven (an animal so adroit, some call it a “flying primate”), but he was not in the enclosure in which I last encountered him, and he does not appear in the zoo’s list of animals. How weird would it be to email the zoo about him?
*Edited on August 14: Thank you for the encouragement. I spoke with someone in the animal care department: Poe the raven lives! According to an email reply from the zoo, he can be found in the Wild Encounters exhibit.
Mesmerizing
At the Shedd Aquarium this morning.
Seen
At the Toledo Zoo and Aquarium.
Remarkable
Seen at the Herb and Nada Mahler Family Aviary at the Milwaukee County Zoo.
Perspective
Seen at the Milwaukee County Zoo.
Spring
Image captured near a closed building at the Detroit Zoo.
Vitamin Z
At the Detroit Zoo.
Last Saturday was gray and bitterly cold, the perfect day for the zoo. Although the butterfly garden had not received a shipment in many weeks, the habitat was beautiful, and the three butterfly species present included the splendid Blue Morpho. I could have spent the entire visit there and in the free-flight aviary next door, “If this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is,” running in an endless inward loop just behind my smiling lips. Had we not ventured out, though, I’d have missed so many other animals, including a wolverine, the primates, two of the happiest (seeming) wolves I’ve ever seen, and, of course, the rhino, among others.
Nerdishly 