Robot Claw

Today, after a very early start, we took the subway to the 1976 Olympics location. Although the stadium and other venues are still there, our destination was the Biodome, which is a sort of indoor zoo.

That’s Jim with one of the locals.

The Biodome contains 4 ‘biomes’, which are separate habitats that represent three parts of Canada and… well the fourth is tropical rainforest! Each is very large and has controlled temperature and a variety of animals and plants to see. It’s very impressive.

Here are shots from the rainforest section:

And the Canadian wilderness section (can you see the beaver swimming?):

And the Canadian Atlantic coast:

That’s a sturgeon Jim is admiring. The massive tank (which has surface viewing as well) is full of them. Me; I’m pointing to an evil fish. Don’t believe me…?

Maybe he has a good heart?

The final section was arctic, which meant the animals (birds) were behind glass in their cooled enclosures. The penguins were particularly popular with the visitors:

All in all, the Biodome is a very impressive place to spend a couple of hours, and you should visit if you’re in town.

The lovely filly concierge at our hotel had recommended the botanical gardens to me yesterday, and since it was a hop and a skip from the Biidome we hopped (and skipped) over.

The entry cost included the intriguing ‘Insectarium’ and it was this that we visited first.

What a surprise! This was an amazing collection of insects (most dead, but many alive) from all over the world sorted by family of colour or habitat or diet etc., etc. There were thousands to admire, and the presentation was as good as any I have seen.

(Yes, that’s my hand!)

Perhaps the highlight was an ingenious display of leaf cutter ants, crafted in such a way as to give guests the chance to watch them harvest and then carry leave pieces to their nests:

Awesome stuff! In my opinion, the insectarium alone made the ticket worthwhile, and we hasn’t even really entered the gardens themselves…

Anyway the Gardens are where it’s at here in Montreal right now, because of a topiary art installation. You know what that is: sculpture from plants. They can draw big crowds for this stuff?

I’m going to cut right to the chase:

The ‘Tree of Birds’! 16 feet high, 18 feet wide, dozens of tonnes and 56 birds all made with plants (over an aluminium frame, of course).

It was – and I’m not a big fan of this word – amazing!

But wait…..

Look at her! Gaia, The Earth Mother, rising 5 meters tall, deer in one hand and a waterfall in the other, all made of plants. It was awesome.

All told there were over 50 of these sculptures, ranging from ‘better than anything I could ever do’ to ‘difficult to believe it’s even possible’. Here’s a few more examples:

I was a particular fan of the orangutan, which very effectively used a type of brown grass for the fur. Needless to say, this exhibit (and the gardens overall) was absolutely worth seeing.

Did you see the bright sun in those photos? Well it saw us, especially the fact we had no sunscreen on since when we left the hotel rain was forecast.

My plan to stave off the inevitable sunburn by applying sunscreen after hours in the hot sun seems to have failed. In the afternoon we went for a walk around Old Montreal, but clearly by that point we had been ruined by a mixture of sunstroke and dehydration, and if it wasn’t for the (no joke!) over 2 hours of post carding and blogging I may have fallen asleep at 8:30 like Jim did 🙂