Saturday's Photo Hunting: fluffy tummies

Our friend Gattina in Belgium hosts Saturday's Photo Hunting, and this week the word is fluffy.
Here are a few photos I found of fluffy tummies, from our archives.

Dick's old cat, Igor, who lived to be 20 years old. He wasn't a fluffy cat, but he had a fluffy tummy.

Gao Gao, the daddy panda at the San Diego Zoo. We'll see him again at the end of this month.

Gao Gao's daughter, Su Lin, in 2006 at the age of 5 months, spent most of her time up in a tree, and we could see her tummy from below. Su Lin now lives in China.

Buttercup, the official resident sloth at the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica.

Close up of a Capuchin monkey in the rain in Costa Rica.

This fluffy-tummied youngster is a baby frigate bird in the Galapagos Islands.

I was very surprised when this fellow jumped onto my shoulder in Casablanca.

A baby puffin looks at photos of other puffins during my tour of Sea World in Florida.

My school friend Carola and her husband Ken have two Maine Coon cats named Dash and Lily.
This is Lily in the laundry basket.

These two doves in Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii, are all fluffed up because it was a tiny bit chilly one morning, although not by Canadian standards!

Our favorite fluffy tummy in all the world belongs, of course, to our dog Lindy!

© Photos by Kay Davies and Richard Schear

X, good for Scrabble, crossword puzzles, and xylophagous

ABC Wednesday

Note: I was going to write about xeriscaping, which is what Dick and I should do in our large yard in the desert part of Canada’s prairie, where cacti grow wild. We really should, but it would be very uncomfortable for our dog Lindy to have a yard like this:

So I decided to go with this X word:  

xy·loph·a·gous (zī-lŏfˈə-gəs)

It is an adjective, meaning:

1. Feeding on wood, as certain insects or insect larvae.
2. Destructive to wood, as certain crustaceans or fungi.

Wikipedia says many insects, or their larvae, and a large number of polyplacophorans (in great depths in the world’s oceans) are xylophagous. 

HOWEVER, I chose the word xylophagous because one of my favorite animals is on this list. No, not bark beetles or even gribbles, but yes, I love instead the Giant Panda. 

(Gribbles aren’t as cute, are only 1/16 inch long, and I haven't taken any photos of them. Wikipedia has a picture, if you want to look at gribbles, but I’m posting pandas.)

Examples of wood-eating animals

Bark beetles, horntails, termites, Giant Panda, panaque catfish, gribbles, shipworms

SO here is my excuse to post PANDA PICTURES (roar of the crowd, deafening applause, and drum roll) on ABC Wednesday's X day! Yay!

Here they are, ladies and gentlemen, the cutest xylophagous animals in Xistence (and threatened with Xtinction) ... GIANT ... PANDAS ... (more applause) from our visit to the San Diego Zoo several years ago.

Above, Su Lin in a tree, which is where young pandas stay in order to be safe from predators while their mothers are out gathering and eating bamboo.

Because the San Diego Zoo pandas have their bamboo pre-gathered by their staff, Su Lin's mother, Bai Yun, is sleeping (right).


We don't eat much bamboo ourselves, so we went to a restaurant farther up in the zoo complex, and from our table we could see Su Lin was still in her tree (below).

Photos by Kay Davies and Richard Schear

 Su Lin's daddy, Gao Gao, likes to show off for the tourists, but mostly (see below) he likes eating the wood and leaves of the bamboo tree.
He's a xylophagus mammal, big time!

Posted for the letter X in the ABC Wednesday meme.
How have others around the world dealt with X? To find out, click
HERE

Around the World in Eighteen Minutes

Above, winter in Redcliff, Alberta, Canada, and a wild rabbit posing in front of the car. "Hey, I can't escape this weather, but you people can!"
Iguana in a tree in Costa Rica. No snow, just show.
Land iguana in Ecuador's beautiful Galapagos Islands, on the equator.
Toucan in a tree in Costa Rica.
Sled dogs near Whitehorse, in Canada's Yukon.
Capuchin monkey in the rain in Costa Rica. Yes, tropical rain forest.
Above, we saw hundreds of these "blue morph" butterflies in Costa Rica.
Gao Gao, the daddy panda in California's San Diego Zoo, lies on his back and flirts with the tourists. He loves to be the center of attention.
Back in Alberta, Lindy, our lovely dog, with her best friend, our granddaughter Kiana.

Kay visits Giant Pandas in San Diego

Dick and I went to San Diego for the finals of the first World Baseball Championship, which we both enjoyed. We even met people who recognized our Medicine Hat Blue Jays baseball caps. I insisted we also have "Kay's Day at the Zoo" because I'd fallen in love with the San Diego Zoo's Giant Pandas via their panda cam. We saw Su Lin (my second panda cam cub) 'way up in a tree, and her mother, Bai Yun, down below with her back to the crowd. However, daddy Gao Gao is a real ham, and he put on quite an act for us, rolling on his back and flirting upside down with the lady tourists.