Greetings and welcome to another Fuzzy Friday open thread diary kind of thing for the Street Prophets group and the broader, oranger Daily Kos community. 'Tis I, your beloved, hairy host-- Marko the Werelynx.
Thenk yew, thenk yew... you're too kind. Please-- sit down, sit down...
Crickets always make such a fuss.
I thought this week that I'd share another batch of photos with you. Last weekend Mrs. the Werelynx and I took advantage of a couple of free admission tickets to the zoo here in Prague. There had been several changes to the exhibits since we were last there so we were looking forward to exploring-- despite the chilly drizzle. In the last dozen years or so the zoo has been hit with a couple of big floods and there has been a great effort since the worst hit in 2002 to provide living quarters for the biggest animals in the upper section of the zoo, safely removed from the dangers of flooding.
There were more than just new enclosures and pavilions though. Step over the curly-coiffed ginger hairball for a few photos, won't you?
The zoo was pretty empty. It had been open for a few hours and we were only the 185th and 186th visitors for the day. By the time we left the parking lots had filled up, but we appreciated the lack of elbows around the exhibits while we could.
Both the elephants and the hippos had gained new, large indoor and outdoor spaces since our previous visit. A friend of ours works for the company that provided the water pumping and filtration technology for both exhibits and he had told us about the technical problems of keeping hippo water clean and about his day meeting the elephants. Unfortunately, the weather on our visit was more suited to the polar bears than to the big Asian and African mammals. So I didn't manage to get very interesting photos of the elephants, and well, the hippos weren't entirely cooperative either:
One thing of particular interest to my fellow Prophets might be the permanent exhibit about Hinduism and Buddhism that's part of a more general exhibit about the Indian elephant and its importance in the culture and society of India. The little Hindu and Buddhist temples they'd set up were rather well done I thought.
I mean, this isn't made of plastic and particle board-- and somebody had been burning incense recently.
Around the little Buddhist temple there were prayer wheels set into the walls with signs even explaining the correct direction to spin them. Even the doors were wonderful:
About the only creatures getting any use out of the outdoor elephant space (which goes on for the better part of a kilometer) were these incredibly rare and impressive ducks:
Finer, more patient examples of Mallard you're unlikely to find anywhere-- except perhaps in Charles City, Iowa or Carmel, Indiana or...
They weren't impressed either.
A few of the animals took a greater interest in their visitors:
Some seemed less than pleased--
although, I didn't really seem to be the focus of any animal animosity. I think that's one of the most intense stares I've ever seen.
By the time I figured out how much to adjust the settings on my little camera to compensate for the backlighting on this birdie it had flown off again:
But it does provide a lovely silhouette, no?
Despite what Craig Ferguson used to say about flamingos I didn't notice that our flock was particularly pungent:
These flowers were fantastically aromatic though:
Some zoo residents didn't seem to mind the weather. The sea lions were calmly floating while lifting one flipper out of the water. Their tank offers a good view both above and below the water:
The new hippo enclosure, both the indoor area and the outdoor area, allows visitors to see what's going on under the water (if that filtration system is working). The polar bears, the otters, the penguins... they all have enclosures that allow for underwater viewing. One of the smaller buildings that we saw for the first time is the new Giant Salamander Exhibit where you can even get views of the salamanders from underneath:
And yeah, I got in a bit of trouble for taking that picture. Turns out that the salamanders are sensitive to even the infra-red light given off by digital cameras. I'm not so ignorant as to take pictures of zoo animals with a flash, but I'd never thought about the other blinky bits of my camera disturbing them. I guess there was a sign outside the exhibit, and I later overheard the keeper talking with a colleague about the lack of signs within the exhibit itself. Anyway, we have a lot of giant salamanders in Prague now-- although most of them are pretty small, the largest of them must be well over a meter long.
These underwater views make me want to go snorkeling again. I've only been twice and I'd always have a moment of near panic every time I'd thrust my face mask into the water and take that first breath with my face wet-- overcoming my instinct to close my eyes and hold my breath. I have a special fondness for exhibits in the zoo that afford me the same underwater scenery without the accompanying fear of drowning.
The gavials supposedly have their own pavilion, but don't tell them about all the turtles and fish they have swimming around in there with them.
There's a lot going on in that photo-- more Marko than I like in my photos, but I think the reflection is an interesting addition.
The scratches on the glass are nothing to be concerned about, folks...
I liked the way the gavials stacked themselves up on the bottom and how the bottommost gavial patiently allowed the gavial above to step on its snout.
And then, there's perhaps my favorite picture from that visit to the zoo. I caught the mongoose in a rare, split-second pause in its circuit through its enclosure:
Thanks for stopping by!