Sonia and Ruth at the Oregon Zoo
Good evening, Kibitzers! Through one of those rambling, time-sucking meanders through YouTube, I happened upon a playlist of the Oregon Zoo channel entitled, “Tiny Goat Visits”.
The Oregon Zoo is located in Portland, and is the oldest zoo west of the Mississippi River (founded in 1888). The zoo participates in numerous breeding and conservation programs for endangered and threatened animals, including one at a separate site where California condors are raised for release in the wild. They also raise and release western pond turtles and two species of native butterflies.
But you can read about all that on their website. We’re here about goats!
So, among the goats who live in the “Family Farm” area and help keep invasive plants in check, babies Ruth and Sonia were acquired early in 2018, and socialized before they joined the adult herd partly through walks around the zoo, where they met new people and other animals. Eventually, they’ll work part-time at the condor sanctuary, clearing brush there. Ruth, as you’ll hear in the videos, was named for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She’s said to be “tiny but mighty”. They don’t mention how Sonia was named, so let’s just go ahead and assume that she is Justice Sotomayor’s namesake.
It was hard to narrow down which videos to include, but you can easily go to that channel and see the rest, if you have nothing to do for way longer than you intended. I warn you that the head goat keeper and “cool aunt” has a thing for bad puns. ;)
* They know that this animal is not a chupacabra. His name is Chupacabra and they’re just being cute. They do explain it.
The zoo has MANY other videos besides Tiny Goat Visits, most of them short clips of cute and/or interesting animals without the more elaborate production of these. Here’s a fun example: baby flamingos learn to flamingo. Looks kind of like dinosaur races!
So, do you have a local zoo? Have they moved into the present day with conservation programs and environmental education, or are they still stuck at “cages with animals”?
Yet a third hurricane season started June 1, and Puerto Rico is still struggling to recover.
It is Day 685 since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI (diary here regarding the start of another hurricane season). Denise generally collects resonant tweets at the top of her comment threads, as well, and in the APR’s thread most mornings, to make it easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
PUERTO RICO and USVI DISASTER RELIEF DONATION LINKS
The Daily Kos community has its own project: Puerto Rico resident Bobby Neary (newpioneer) leads a small team dedicated to helping a specific rural elder who was left by the storms without power, water, a roof, or any belongings but a moldy mattress. If you like to see concrete results, this is the project for you. See newpioneer’s diaries for ways to help. See this one in particular, and this comment with photos. See also his lovely and heartbreaking poem, and his recent tribute to the island.
(🌅 = most recently recommended by Denise)
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