Category: Critters

Saturday I went up to Big Canoe to visit Mom, Carol, Bob, David, and Andrew who are staying all week as well as Jeb, Kathy, Kelly, and Claire who were just staying the weekend. But first I went straight to the zoo where it was announced this week that a baby giraffe was born. At least that’s when I heard about it in the AJC, but actually it happened on July 13. In the wild, giraffes have to be able to walk pretty quickly or they will be eaten. So they come out pretty big already, and this “baby” is already six feet tall. It’s amazing they survive at all given the drop from the mother which is also six feet.

Continue reading “Giraffes and Big Canoe”

I’ve had a lot of opossum activity lately. A few weeks ago at night, I let the dogs out and they were barking which they don’t do unless they’ve got something. So I rushed outside and they were barking at a tree. I used the flashlight to scan the tree and there were two faces looking back at me. Opossums about five feet apart in the branches. I thought it wouldn’t be good to take a picture because that might force them to play dead and they would fall out of the tree. Then just the other night we were taking a walk and the dogs perked up about something, but it was near a house where there are outdoor cats. I turned on my flashlight on low to look around and there was something scurrying towards us. It turned and came straight down the sidewalk towards us at a fairly casual walking pace, a opossum. I held the dogs back and it stopped as if it was just noticing us, thought better of its current path and turned to cross the street and away from us. The dogs loved this.

Then tonight I let the dogs out and they went bolting into the backyard. They don’t do this unless they are on to something. I grabbed the flashlight again (I keep one hanging right next to the back door for this kind of thing) and looked all around. Directly under the fig tree I could see out towards all of the canopy, but I didn’t see anything. I got out and went to the side and there was a opossum hanging on and watching us. I went back in and the dogs followed (amazingly) and got the camera. With the dogs shut inside I was able to snap this photo.

This morning Susan and I got up early to see the new baby panda, Xi Lan (pronounced shee lahn, which means “Atlanta’s joy” where Lan is short for Atlanta). Born in August and briefly rejected by its mother, Lun Lun, Xi Lan was named on December 8 after 100 days, and only went on exhibit in the last week or so, and only for short times in the mornings. We got to the zoo shortly after it opened at 9:30 and got to the Panda area before 10:00 when they typically would let Lun Lun and Xi Lan into a glassed in area. We got to see the father Yang Yang who is kept in a separate area (though he can see Lun Lun and Xi Lan through the glass, but doesn’t seem to care; in the wild male pandas don’t take part in raising the cubs and rarely see their mates). Also the earlier panda baby, Mei Lan, is in her own area. At two years old, she looks fully grown and will probably leave the zoo this year. It was very cold (in the 30’s) but the pandas didn’t seem to mind. Xi Lan came out, but seemed to want to go back into the off-exhibit area except that Lun Lun would go and drag him back so that she could keep an eye on him while she ate the fresh bamboo in the public area. The zoo staff was pretty good about keeping people quiet and saying that if people made a lot of noise the pandas would go back inside.

Afterwards we went to see Susan’s favorite, the red panda. What I didn’t realize was this red panda is new, named Shandy. The previous red panda, Izzy, left in November to go to St. Louis to find a boyfriend.

One nickname for a red panda is firefox. They do look a lot like a fox. But in the logo below they went with an actual fox instead of a red panda:

Austin had a growth removed from his backside last week. So that he won’t pull the stitches out, he has to wear an e-collar for 11 days. I already had one that I had gotten for Clio, but it was too hard for her to use, so I didn’t make her wear it. Thursday Austin had just come back from the vet and was pretty out of it from the anesthesia, so it wasn’t a big deal. Friday he kept running into things and would get the edge of the cone stuck on door jambs and just stop, waiting for me to get him unstuck. But by Saturday he was wandering around the house like a champ and avoiding (for the most part) running into things. By Saturday night, he actually broke it when I let him outside (I wasn’t supposed to let him out without a leash, but it was the middle of the night, so I just let him out; mistake). I was able to make repairs though and he wore it all day today while I was at work without a problem. I don’t make him wear it all the time, just when I can’t watch him and at night. The vet said a dog can pull the stitches out in a minute, so I don’t want to take any chances.

He looks kind of miserable in the picture above, but he actually doesn’t mind. The cone attaches to his collar so when I take it off, he gets concerned, just like he does when I normally take his collar off. And then he wants it back on, just like normal. Wikipedia tells me that the E is short for Elizabethan since apparently Queen Elizabeth also could not be trusted not to pull her stitches out.