All right, for all those who have been badgering (kangarooing?) me for photos of native Australian animals, here you go! Kay (the girl from Nebraska that I had Thanksgiving pizza with) and I made it to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary on Sunday. It was great! They have the day organized into informational talks all over the little park about every half hour on the different animals. First we went to the koala talk. Afterwards the ranger brought out a koala so we could pet it - it was softer than I thought it would be. His name was Monacle because he was blind in one eye (from birth). Then we went to the kangaroo talk. The most notable thing about the kangaroo talk was that an emu wandered up and just sort of stuck his beak into the gazebo that we were sitting in. There are some pretty funny photos of that - emus are hilarious-looking to begin with, and this guy had his beak parted and he looked really excited and curious and almost like he was laughing! It was great. All of the talks also addressed the issue of the impact of humans and the danger that the environment is in, and what we can do to help preserve the habitats (like planting eucalyptus trees) and ways to avoid accidentally killing the animals in the wild (ie by being more alert when driving, especially in the bush and especially around dusk and dawn - like deer). Then, since Kay is really into birds (she was a fisheries and wildlife major in college, I think, and went on to work at a zoo for 6 years), we went to the Birds of Prey flight show. There are some photos of a couple of the birds in there. Finally, we went to the Lorikeet feeding, where the ranger put out a bunch of different bowls and you could hold one and have these beautiful birds flock to you - that was cool. In between the talks, we wandered around, petting what you could pet and taking photos and reading about the rest. You can go right into the kangaroo area and even feed them, so there are a million photos of them - they are so cute. These ones are really docile, I'm sure because they're used to it. I wouldn't go up to a completely wild one and try to pet it! There are also photos of other animals - tree frog, wombat, cassowary... All in all, a good day trip (about an hour from the center of the city, where we met up).
Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/amy.horning/LonePineKoalaSanctuary
Enjoy!
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4 comments:
Loved the slide show of all the animals you saw. I've heard or read that koalas can be mean too, but I'm guessing the ones you saw are used to being around people.
Glad you enjoyed :) Yeah, I thought of you during all the environmental parts of the talks! And koalas sleep something like 20 hours a day, so there's not a whole lot of time for them to be mean in! But yeah, these ones are probably particularly tame.
At the Oregon zoo they have lorakeets. They're so used to people coming with little dixie cups of sugar water, that if you just stick out your finger, they'll come over and land on it. It's kinda neat.
Awesome!
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