Aminals

My poor wife has been missing her dog Parker something fierce.  Not a day (sometimes not an hour) goes by that she doesn’t tell me how much she loves him and wishes he were here.  Every time we go to Cainz (Wal-Mart type store) we go and check out the puppies.  She’s still trying to get them to rent her one until Parker can move over here with us.

About 10 days ago, we were doing some work outside.  I noticed some movement by the fence and then I saw a little head pop up over the bricks.  I think I may have gasped a little.  I starting tapping Sharron and pointing at the animal.  It turned out to be a ferret.  Quite shocking to have a ferret come calling really.  He certainly was a friendly little guy as he came right through the fence and was very curious about what we were doing.  I thought perhaps he was wild, but then I figured he must have gotten loose from a neighbors house as who ever heard of a wild ferret in Tokyo?  I heard the neighbors kids, so I went to get them to see if it was theirs.  Sharron meanwhile was having a grand time playing with the little guy.  He wanted to check out every inch of what we were doing and even started climbing on her.  She even asked me if we could keep him.  :-)  The neighbor kids said that he wasn’t theirs, so I switched to the other side of the house.  There was a guy washing his car and he couldn’t seem to figure out what I was telling him.  Finally I just motioned for him to come over and when I did, he immediately recognized that it was his ferret.  Sharron was sad, but we were glad that he got reunited with his owner.  He sure was friendly!

We also watched March of the Penguins recently.  Very interesting, amusing, sad and heartwarming movie.  We enjoyed it and so would you.

All of this came to a head and since Sharron loves animals so much and since she found one near by recently, we decided to go to the Zoo on Saturday.  It isn’t a very big zoo, but it makes up for that with its animals.  Honestly, from the street you can almost see the entire zoo, but once you’re on the grounds, it is very charming and fun.  My favorites were the monkeys (Macaque) and the penguins.  The monkeys had one of the biggest habitats with lots of things to play with, but what made them really interesting what how active they were.  They were running, jumping, swinging, preening, eating and fighting which made for some very most amusing watching.  The penguins were cool because the zoo was selling fish to the patrons to feed them.  We didn’t buy any (the line was HUGE!), but we did stand there and watch them for awhile.  There was one other animal that was completely interesting and cute.  I have no idea what he is anymore (EDIT:  Red Panda), but there was a trainer in his habitat with him talking to the audience.  While she was talking, he climbed up on a pedestal behind her and kept reaching out to grab her.  It was clear that he’d done this before and that he knew she had treats for him.  Very funny.

Non-animal:  Here is a link to an interesting article.  Notice the author.  :-)