Category: Animals

White Boomers

November 4, 2014

My mum asked me to make a post about my favourite animal…

That’s a very rare albino kangaroo, photographed about a year ago near Canberra.

That’s another one in a pack in outback NSW. As you can see, the other roos don’t seem to mind him 🙂

Albino kangaroos are rare for two reasons. First the genetic defect is rare, and secondly their susceptibility to the extreme Australian heat leads to short life expectancy.

Thankfully – and for obvious reasons – zoos and wildlife parks take good care of albinos when they receive them and they can live long and happy lives in captivity. An albino kangaroo in Denmark even became a mother to (non albino) joeys 🙂

Since I’m on the topic, here’s some more albino Australians:

Both the Koala and the Kookaburra are in captivity. The Emu photo looks like it was taken years ago, but there are also albino emu in captivity.

Australia’s (probably the worlds?) most famous albino is of course Migaloo:

He’s a male Humpback Whale, believed to be 28 years old this year, who lives on the east coast of Australia and is sighted every year as he makes his annual migration. Up until 2011 he was believed to be the only albino humpback in the world, but now a second has emerged (‘Migaloo Junior’, although they are unrelated). Migaloo is a national treasure, and protected by Australian law. I’d love to see him one day 🙂

The Big Fair

August 26, 2014

We went to a bigger and better fair this past Saturday! The Dutchess County Fair to be precise.

That’s KLS with a prized turkey. It was for sale!

We saw many, many animals, such as this lovely duck…

A baby kangaroo…

And even camels!

The animals were all quite friendly, with the exception of a savage fowl that big my finger! Here’s the criminal:

If she wasn’t so cute I would have roasted her!

Speaking of food, I’ll shamefully admit I ate a gyro and a plate of fries at 10:30…

And then only a couple of hours later had a ‘Pluto pup’ (to use the Oz vernacular):

Don’t let those smiles fool you, because not ten minutes later I looked like this:

KLS enjoyed her Greek vegetarian platter, even though she could hardly eat it all!

Of course we saw the other fair attractions, such as the produce and flowers and farm equipment and – one of my favourites – the art!

This ‘painting’ made of flowers and plants was extremely impressive:

But you all know what I wanted to see most don’t you? Yes, the rides!

Sadly my gluttony had ruined me and I was too green to consider riding any…

This didn’t stop me admiring them just long enough to bore KLS! This one in particular I’d never seen before and was quite taken with:

Unusually (for us) we made quite a lot of purchases at the fair. But those are mostly Christmas gifts and will remain secret 😉

It was a fun day, and a good end to the summer!

Busy Day

July 30, 2014

Wendy’s serves the full menu all day did you know? That’s how I had a spicy chicken sandwich at 7:30 am! This was my breakfast of course, and we had woken early since we had a busy day planned. On our way to our second Vegas hotel we had two stops to make. The first was this place, about an hour from the Grand Canyon:

Bearizona is a wildlife park with a three mile drive-through section and a more traditional zoo for smaller beasts. The focus is on wildlife of Arizona and it’s a very impressive park.

That’s a goat and a white bison. They also had buffalo, wolves, burros and other goats. The star attraction of course is these guys:

Look at that show off bear being cute in the water tub! The large bears roam free in 14 acres, not caring at all about the cars and people within! There are many of them wandering around, and in the zoo portion of the park there are many more in two enclosures divided by age. Here’s a shot of the cubs:

They look peaceful enough there, but 99% of the time they were play-fighting with each other like little fuzzy wrestlers! The little buggers were so cute!

In addition to bears the zoo has foxes, porcupines, otters, an American badger and a few other beasts. It’s laid out very well and we both enjoyed Bearizona quite a bit. If you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a visit 🙂

A few hours later and we were back in Vegas. Only a few blocks from our next hotel was today’s second attraction: the Pinball Hall of Fame.

This is essentially a warehouse containing hundreds of pinball machines, almost all working and playable. They range from old EM games from the 1950s through to the last pinball made (so far) from 2013. They also have retro arcade games and a few other odds and ends.

It’s a pinball fans dreamworld, and I scurried around playing as many as I could. This included some landmark games like Black Knight, Fireball, Haunted House and Pinbot.

One of the appeals of pinball for me is the art. Many of the games on display were beautiful, especially restored as they are and lit up like they would have been when manufactured.

All the games had historical information on them. Impacto (look at that art!) was an oddity since the guy that owns the museum in 40 years of looking has found no info on the game or the (Spanish) company that created it.

Needless to say I loved this place. If I lived nearby I’d visit all the time 🙂

And then we arrived at our second Vegas hotel, Caesar’s Palace. It’s a bit posh and a bit expensive and a bit luxurious. Should be fun!

Robot Claw