You know how black labs get really excited sometimes???
Imagine how excited a black lab can be when surrounded by a bunch of excited children….
INSIDE THE SCHOOL.
I stand near the front doors in our main hallway every morning and greet students as they head to class.
Imagine my surprise this morning when an adorable black lab followed some kids through the front door of our school and decided he was going to see where all the action was!!
I quickly caught this feisty cutie pie by his collar (luckily he was wearing one!) and herded him back out the front doors. He didn’t want to leave but eventually did once the kids were out-of-sight ;)
I wonder what other excitement today has in store for me! There is never a dull moment around here, that is for sure!
I am not positive but I think this cute little lady is a Cliff Sparrow.
These birds make colonies of nests made of mud. Saw her outside the doors of my local grocery store a few weeks ago and was fortunate to have my camera and my zoom lens in my purse….
I grabbed my camera out of my purse and walked up close to him. I didn’t have time to switch lenses from my 50mm so I had to get in close. I was maybe 2 feet away to get this shot and he snapped like heck at me. Scared the bajeezus out of me and I jumped back and ran for my car! lmao
Totally worth the scare to get such a nice shot of him ;)
Meet Prince, a Purple Spilo Piranha. He has lived with us for about seven or eight years now and he is pretty cool. He is now in a spacious 75 gallon tank all by himself and looks pretty handsome under the full-spectrum light. I did not do anything to enhance these photos, he is just a gorgeous fresh water fish. He isn’t too aggressive as far as piranhas go and he doesn’t usually like to eat in front of an audience, so on the rare occasion that we see him eat, it is cool to see. He usually eats frozen shrimp; the feeder goldies are a treat just a few times a year.
A few weeks ago we traded in all of our other fish (there were just a few) for a second piranha, a Gold Mac. He is much more active than Prince is. If you want to see him eat, make sure to watch the video of him eating at the bottom of this post!
A few weeks ago I posted about a trip I took to Como Park Zoo back in February. In that post I shared a photo of this strange turtle and told you I would have to tell you more about him. Remember that?!
This is the very same turtle who used to belong to us about eleven years ago, named Norman Smiley.
{Yes, I am full of surprises!}
My guy found him at a specialty pet store (was it Twin City Reptiles?) and thought how cool he was (and rare!) and bought him for roughly $300. We had him for about 6-12 months when we realized how much work it was to keep an aquatic turtle (holy crap, literally!) and decided to donate him to the Zoo. We know one of the head zookeepers at Como who was happy to acquire such a rare (to the U.S) species. We knew he would have a good home.
Over the years we received updates about how Norman was doing and were happy to hear a few years back that they had found a mate for him. As soon as the Tropical Encounters Exhibit was built in 2005, Norman was moved to his new home. We have visited the zoo many times since then and had always looked for him, but with no luck. The aquatic habitat they have him in is quite large and wraps around the entire space, so there were many places he could hide (not to mention many other species of aquatic animals).
I was thrilled to find Norman and his mate greeting me when I made the visit in February. He was very visible at the front of the exhibit, right in front of the glass.
Matamatas are fresh-water turtles native to Venezuela and other northern countries in South America. They are ugly-as-sin, characterized by their bumpy, long necks and triangular-shaped heads. In the wild they stick their little reed-looking nose out of the water to breathe (see photo at bottom of post), while waiting in ambush for the nearest fish to swim by. Check out this video I found of a matamata feeding
Wild, huh? It was cool to watch our turtle feed but he ate too much and we just couldn’t keep up with all the poop! lol
Like all turtles, matamatas can live for a really long time and they get HUGE. And believe me, they don’t get any prettier with age (quite the opposite!)
Want to know why he was named Norman Smiley? One look at this photo and you know why ;) (photo by UmpBump on Flickr)
This might be a face that only a mother could love?!
A profile view of a matamata….
So there you have it, my little story about our former MataMata, Mr. Norman Smiley ;)
These photos were all taken about 6-7 weeks ago (mid-February) when I was out at Como Park for a work event (The District Spelling Bee was held in the ballroom above the Visitor’s Center). After I finished working I walked around the zoo to check out the animals.
At first I was thinking, boy, are all the animals going to be sleeping today? Or just these big daddies?
There was a very small orangutan who was wrestling with his buddy (older brother, perhaps?) It was the cutest thing to watch! It was somewhat dark and they were moving too fast for me to get any decent shots but they sure were fun to watch!
And last but not least is this MataMata turtle in the Tropical Encounters exhibit. He deserves a special post (I will tell you why later), so I will be blogging about him soon!
I was at a training for work the other day, at a location within a busy area in St Paul. There is a walled-in sunken courtyard around one side of the building which you can see through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Anyway, I happened to see two WHITE squirrels hopping around in the courtyard. When we had a break, I snuck out and snapped some photos of this interesting little guy. Can you see his pink eyes? We have millions of gray squirrels in MN and these guys obviously had the genes to be albino. There are some near my parents house too but this is the first I have ever seen one up close and personal!
I was at a school-related event out at Como Zoo yesterday and had some time to check out some of the animals. I also happened to have my camera & 55-200mm zoom lens with me which really helped me to get some good shots. These animal photos will be coming in a series, starting with some monkeys and great apes.
On Saturday afternoon Betty and I braved the heat and took a very long walk through downtown Austin. We started down by the Colorado River and worked our way north to the Capitol. The nature down by the river was quite pretty……
Would you have guessed that the temperature was over 100' F and that Texas is experiencing the worst drought in 50 years?
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