The Mosenthins: Zoo

Taking a little rest.

Do you see him? :-)

I'll give you a clue: look right beside her right cheek to the right of the green food dish. This was one of the muntjac. They look like miniature deer and they are quite cute. They are originally from several of the Asian countries. Because of Kaelyn's obsession/fascination with reindeer, she was quite excited to see these. It was kind of odd because their caged in area was actually a long area but it ran back behind several other animal cages so unless you were paying attention and looking behind the cages, it would have been easy to miss them. We were apparently only seeing female ones before and all the sudden Kaelyn came running over to where we were looking at another animal nearby. She was so excited and she said, "You HAVE to come see this right away!" She had spotted one with little horns. There was one area along the cage where you could step off the main path and see them back under the brush. The muntjac in this picture seemed friendly and curious. It came up as close as it could to the inner fence and stood there watching Kaelyn.

I found this picture online and added it here so that you could see what the muntjac looks like that Kaelyn thought was so cute! :-)

The Wallabies are so fascinating to watch in my opinion. They have a really good set-up/viewing area so you can really see them quite well. They look so ridiculous when they hop which is probably the main reason I find them so interesting to watch. :-)

The youngest wallaby with what we assumed was its mother. The little one was about 5 months old according to the girl who was in there feeding them.

This is the Burmese Python to the right of Kaelyn. I get the heebie-jeebies just looking at it through the glass. Kevin wanted to get this picture of Kaelyn but he about never got her to go in there. :-) After much convincing that the glass was very thick and the snake couldn't get near her, he finally talked her into going in for a quick picture. UGH! *Becky shutters*

This is the New Guinea singing dog. There was a male and female. They look like domesticated dogs and actually act pretty domesticated in the zoo setting but in the wild, they would act more like a wolf or coyote.

They're called the singing dogs and boy, do they "sing". They'll get to howling and carrying on and it's funny to hear them and watch them.

This is Oz the Koala.

The koalas are one of the neatest additions that the zoo has made in the past few years. They have a male and a female, Oz and Abby. They are normally in air conditioned glass enclosures. We spotted Abby fast asleep up in her tree in her little "room". There were two rooms that Oz could go back and forth between. We looked and looked and didn't see him. Since the wallabies, koalas, New Guinea dogs, and fenec fox are all close to each other in the same area, we just went back and forth to the different animals watching them. I kept going back over to the koalas in hopes that Abby would wake up or we would see Oz. We finally realized that Oz was actually outside in a cage. Apparently since it was such beautiful weather, he had been put outdoors. We've never been able to see them that well or that active. We watched him climb down a tree, meander around, and then climb another tree. I've always thought koalas were cute. Now that I've actually seen one much closer, I can't decide whether they are cute or ugly - maybe they're just so ugly they're cute. :-) The way Abby had her head all tucked under while she slept looked awfully cute though.

Look how his mouth is open in this picture.

Back to the wallabies.

My pictures are "jumping around" because, as I already mentioned, we were meandering back and forth. When we saw one of the workers go into the wallaby area with food for them, we walked back over there. She threw a bunch of kale around in the grass besides putting a food mixture in the dishes. She told us that kale was one of their favorites - silly wallabies! ;-)

Munching on some kale.

The little guy again.

Talking to the "ducks". (Yes, I'm aware that this is some special breed of fowl that would probably be insulted to know they were called common ducks but I don't have a clue what they actually were. They were in with the wallabies and they got fed when she was feeding the wallabies.)

The koala again. I think when he climbed down the tree, he was hoping that it was about time for him to go in for his dinner but the "exits" were all closed off to him.

Surprisingly, he came right up close to the fence where we were.

Koalas have special toes designed for gripping and climbing up and down trees.

Kaelyn said that she loved the way he was smiling. It did look like he had a smile on his face. :-)

The fenec fox. He was cute, even with his HUGE ears.

These were the red bellied lemurs. They are SOOO ugly. Both they and the ring tailed lemurs were on their own islands as were the Goeld's monkeys. It was about 45 minutes till the zoo closed so a couple of the workers got in a canoe and rowed over to the three different islands to feed the lemurs and monkeys. The lemurs obviously knew that the canoe meant food. They climbed all over the canoe waiting for their food.

This monkey was so funny. He had an orange from the food that they had been given. First he sat in a tree peeling it and eating it. Then when he would decide to climb to a different tree or branch he would carry the orange with one of his feet and then use his hands to climb. :-)