January 17, 2008

Don't bite the hand that feeds you

The silence in here is kind of resounding, but I'm going to be undeterred and forge on. I'm still in Australia and having a great time. As promised, here's a picture of a true highlight of this trip:



Yep, that's me, feeding kangaroos. I did it by hand without the little plastic spade, too, but it was hard to get them to stay still long enough to take a picture that way. After you satisfied their tummies, they'd let you pet them, which was pretty damned neat.

The ostrich was another favorite:



This guy and his emu pals followed us around as we circled their huge enclosure, hoping we'd show them some more love and ignore the camels.

One animal you couldn't really pet was the dingo, which looks adorable and innocent in this picture:



...but we all knew he'd take a hand off if he got the chance. (Go ahead, get the dingo jokes out of your system, we did.) Though one of our group, who shall remain nameless, was bold enough to touch one of them on its doggy nose. She still has her finger, however, so there's no gory story to relate.

All this took place at the Mansfield Zoo, which is the coolest, most casual zoo I've ever been to. You could feed the majority of the animals, and watch the carnivores being fed, but it's no mere petting zoo. They have a pair of lion brothers who were very anxious to get their dinner, and you can be sure we didn't actually get to help with that!

I'm having trouble keeping a connection, so I'm going to wrap this up. Just a few more days here in Oz, and still so much to see! We're back in Melbourne and we're hoping to get in to the Australian Open for at least a few hours, and go to the Melbourne Zoo, as well, so we can finally see a koala.