Penguin Bites Newt

Posted on April 16, 2012 by RegenAxe

Newt and Penguin

The first documented case of a penguin biting an amphibian occurred last Friday. This was not one of the Pittsburgh Penguins, but rather a penguin at the Saint Louis Zoo, who appears to not be a Newt Gingrich supporter. The Republican presidential candidate was sporting a small bandage on his finger after getting nipped by a penguin during his tour of the zoo on Friday. Gingrich was in Saint Louis to speak during the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. During his visit to the zoo, he was treated to a behind-the-scenes visit with two Magellanic penguins. A spokesman for Mr. Gingrich said, Newt loves animals, but sometimes love hurts. This spokesman later conceded that maybe eating lunch at the Oyster Bar beforehand, was not a good idea. The penguin claims he mistook Gingrich’s fishy oratory for actual fish. #OccupySTLzoo plans to organize a defense fund for ‘this heroic little bird’. Attorneys for this flightless bird are planning a stand your ice floe defense.

Occupy Forest Park

Posted on December 10, 2011 by RegenAxe

Riding Upside Down

Have you ever had the opportunity to be scrutinized by a lawman? How about a gaggle of them? I had the good fortune to enjoy this experience today. Anne and I spent all of the morning trying to de-hovel the old homestead. Dan’s room in particular, was targeted for extraordinary rendition. Nink and Bob, et al, are arriving later this week for Andrew’s graduation, so more than the ordinary house-keeping is required. It looks a lot better, but I’m afraid that we’ll still have to issue our house guests bike helmets. There is still a lot of congestion at the head room level, what with all of Dan’s hanging objects d’art. I keep telling Anne that it will drive Bob crazy and she always says, “What’s wrong with that?”

Back to the lawmen, soon. I spent all morning running up and down two flights of steps, so by lunchtime, I was exhausted. Then I went for a bike ride. The weather was sunny, in the mid-thirties, cool, but bright. Ice was forming on the ponds. Steinberg rink was doing a good business. There were enough other cyclist out to easily make quota. I checked on the F/A-18 and it was still parked in front of the planetarium. I then got it in my head that I wanted to take a picture of lorikeets. There is a billboard on the way to work that features a picture of lorikeets and the simple message, “To rent this billboard, call …” So off to the zoo I headed.

As I was locking up my bike, I noticed a group of people across the street. They were standing in a grove of trees and I thought that they might be birders on a nature walk. Giving them no further thought, I headed into the Living World and was greeted by the full attention of policemen, rangers and security personnel, half-a-dozen in total. At first, I assumed that their attentions were derived from my bike garb, see the picture above, but their attentions persisted.

Mox nix, I headed to the children’s zoo, but unfortunately, the lorikeets are not on display during the winter. I then wandered around the zoo for an hour. On the way out, the law was still at their station. The group of thirty people was still across the street. I unlocked my bike, adjusted my kit and when I next looked up, the birders were gone. Passing by their site, I noticed a couple of Occupy Saint Louis placards that had been left behind.

The mists cleared and it finally dawned on me why there was so much law enforcement about. They are the occupier’s fan club, their constant companions. I finished out my miles. I saw the occupiers one more time, they were over by the visitor’s center this time. I stopped by the grocery store on the way home to do the shopping. No car driving today, not even the Prius. I got 15 miles.

White Storks

Posted on October 23, 2009 by RegenAxe

White Stork

Pictured above are a pair of White Storks at the Saint Louis Zoo. Storks have long been associated with the delivery of babies, maybe because they are such good parents themselves. The stork pairs mate for life and return to the same nest each year. Storks are also thought to bring both luck and wealth. They build their bulky nests on rooftops, chimneys and telephone poles. Storks have disappeared from western Europe, and now the human populations there are shrinking. Coincidence? I think not.

East African Crowned Cranes

This pair of storks shared a pen with a Nyala, which appeared to me to be some sort of antelope. Anyway the Nyala was behaving erratically. Alternately it would seem to fence with its horns a small low hanging tree branch and then it would chase a pair of East African Crowned Cranes that were also sharing the pen. This behavior made the storks very nervous. Their coping behavior was to tilt their heads backwards so that they were both inverted and then snap their beaks rapidly together. There is a little movie at the end of this post.

Nyala

I got up and out Thursday morning, for my first bike ride in the early morning dark, in a long time. Rain could be seen coming in on the radar, but it managed to hold off until after I got to work. It rained the rest of the day. It was a good ride. I got fifteen miles.

Obscure Animals

Posted on October 22, 2009 by RegenAxe

The animals pictured with today’s post are not that well know. Some like the camel and the prairie dog, I suppose are, but for the most part I think that they are obscure. Before you mouse over them (if you haven’t already) and read their names in the tool tip, try to guess their names. Let me know how you do too. Also, the animals pictured with today’s post are all mammals. They are also all herbivores.

Years ago in the early 1980s, not too long after we had moved here, Saint Louis was hit by a tremendous blizzard. Nineteen inches of snow comes to mind. At the time we were renting and were living less than half a mile from the Park. (Now we own and live a mile and a half from the Park.) The city was shutdown. Back then SUVs weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now and on KMOX radio they were announcing police requests for citizens to volunteer vehicles with four wheel drive. Saint Louis was basically shut down.

I remember that the snow started as we were walking home from the Esquire movie theater. It was late Sunday afternoon. Snow was already falling quite heavily. There was thunder to be heard, so called thunder snow. We were scheduled to drive to some friends house that evening, but decided that the weather was too bad and stayed home.

The snow was still falling Monday morning, all of the highways were closed, and it was obviously a snow day. Anne and I launch on our cross country skis for the Park. We traipsed around for hours and eventually found ourselves at the main entrance to the zoo. By this time we were getting cold. The main entrance was closed, but a service entrance was open. Well it was sort of open, if you discounted the giant snow drift blocking the way. We saw a zoo keeper climbing over it and asked if the zoo was open. He thought for a while and said that most of the buildings would be closed, but that he thought that the zoo was open. Normally the zoo only closes on Christmas and Easter.

We skied around was a little while. The only animals that I remember seeing were the sea lions and the bears. They were having as much fun in the snow as we were. There was one building that was open; it was the old snack bar that used to stand near the sea lion’s pool. We got some hot chocolate and maybe some food there too. I think that we were the only visitors there that were not zoo personnel. The rest of the cliental were zoo keepers, even the guy “running” the snack bar. I remember to this day one of the keepers coming in from the cold and exclaiming to his brethren, “I’m the only one in my department that has made it in. So, I have a couple of hundred herbivores to feed today.” Obscure animals, you have got to love them, well at least somebody does.

OBTW, I biked Tuesday night for the first time in over a week and got fifteen miles.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Posted on October 19, 2009 by RegenAxe

Mommy took us to the zoo today. Well actually I drove, but it was Anne’s idea. Rey came too. The Saint Louis Zoo is probably the second best zoo in the country. The San Diego Zoo is clearly the best. The National Zoo in Washington had given us a run for a while, but I think that in recent years, the Saint Louis Zoo has consistently bested it.

The oldest structure in the Saint Louis Zoo is the bird cage, which dates from the 1904 Worlds Fair. It was the Smithsonian’s exhibit at the fair and is one of three structures still standing from that fair. From that beginning the zoo was born. Marlin Perkins of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom fame was a curator. Amanda Blake, Miss Kitty, from the TV series Gunsmoke, donated the Cheetah exhibit. About twenty years ago Saint Louis County agreed to help fund the zoo, plus a number of other Saint Louis treasures. Since that time the zoo has enjoyed a renaissance. More then half the zoo as it was when Anne and I first moved to Saint Louis has been rebuilt and for the better.

But on Sunday we eschewed many of the newer sections, for the so called heritage portion of the zoo. The weather was perfect for a fall afternoon. As the pictures with this post imply, we did Big Cat Country. We stared for several minutes looking for the lions and then saw them in the middle of their den, busy being passive solar collectors. They had found a place in their cage to hide in plain sight. In the summer months, when dawn comes at its earliest, I am sometimes on the bike path. The big cat’s biological clocks are all set to breakfast time and you can frequently hear them growling as you pass by. On more than one occasion I have joked to a cyclist that I was passing, that you don’t have to be faster than the lions. “I just need to be faster then you!”

I think that all of the animals pictured with this post are pretty easily identifiable. Later this week, I’ll get into the more obscure zoo animals and there will be a quiz. Later still, I will do the birds.

RegenAxe