Real Toads Open Link Monday: Mad Limerick

Photo by Richard Schear, San Diego Zoo, March, 2012

A fellow was off on a quest

(He really was trying his best)

He fell off his horse,

Got back on, of course,

But from then on, his quest, it went west.*

* went west 

On Mondays, the funny and talented Madeleine Begun Kane, winner of the Robert Benchley Society Award for Humor, and author of Mad Kane's Humor Blog, challenges other bloggers to write a limerick using her first line. Minor changes are allowed but the last word of the line must remain the same. This is my submission for this week, using Madeleine's first line unchanged.

Real Toads: open link Monday at the zoo

When we were in San Diego last month, I wanted nothing more than to visit the San Diego Zoo again — and again and again, if possible.

Well, at least I got there once, and if I wasn't particularly spry, my intrepid photographer certainly was, so he took plenty of photos, while I was able to sit down to write a bit of doggerel.



sunshine, blue sky, little tiny clouds
palm trees, jungle trees
and, below,
the crowds —
a dad with half a dozen boys,
a mom with seven girls,
grandparents with their pride and joy:
a six-year-old with curls.
newlyweds stroll arm in arm
while seniors walk with canes
teenagers try to seem blasé
with looks of mock disdain.
this is a weekday at the zoo
and everyone's excited
to see all the animals here,
they're thrilled, indeed delighted.

Some zoos and animal parks are a disgrace, but I truly believe the San Diego Zoo is focused on saving endangered species. They have contributed a great deal to the work of regenerating the Giant Panda, and have already released California Condors, among others, into the wild successfully. They also take on animals other zoos no longer want. These animals often need to be nursed back to health before being put on exhibit, and the devoted staff care for them wonderfully. If I didn't believe this, I would certainly not be submitting these photos to the online writers' group, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. Today is Open Link Monday, and I wrote my little poem just for today.

© Richard Schear photos

Camera Critter: Bai Yun, San Diego Zoo

Bai Yun ("White Cloud") is not a panda cub, and hasn't been a cub for many years. Born in China in 1991, she has been at the San Diego Zoo since 1996. She has given birth to 5 cubs since 1999: Hua Mei (f), Mei Sheng (m), Su Lin (f), Zhen Zhen (m), and Yun Zi (m). Nevertheless, we saw her behaving like a frisky young cub when we visited the zoo last month.
When we first saw Bai Yun in 2006, her second daughter, Su Lin, was about six months old. Su Lin spent most of her time in a tree, sleeping, while Bai Yun spent most of her time sleeping on top of their outdoor den. All we could see of Bai at that time was her generous ("white cloud") backside. Su Lin's papa, Gao Gao, provided the only active entertainment that day.
I was surprised, therefore, to find her extremely playful this time. The zoo's play-by-play announcer said he had never seen her so lively before.
My intrepid photographer was fortunate enough to get many shots of Bai playing with a large disc in her pond. It turned out she was trying to get it out of her pond, and, when she succeeded, she didn't stop to rest. Instead, she began to climb her tree, offering the crowd some more photo opportunities! It was wonderful.

© Richard Schear, March, 2012

Posted for Misty Dawn's
Camera Critters meme.
Thanks, Misty!

Caricature de moi

When I met caricaturist Aida Millan at the San Diego Zoo last month, I was wearing my Tilley Hat and sitting on my folding cane-chair.
We visited for a while, and I talked about pandas, of course. This was the result:

© Aida Millan

Plenty of panda pictures to come. Watch this blog!

Our World was San Diego for a while

Not "far, far away" like our 2011 travels, but we have indeed been away. We flew to San Diego, where we stayed for a week, then cruised to Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo San Lucas, visited San Jose Del Cabo, and cruised to Ensenada and back to San Diego.
Here are a few random shots of the zoo, the city, and Coronado Island.

Posted for Our World Tuesday

Unreal camera critters, folks, simply unreal

Photo by Kay Davies      

Photo by a kindly stranger   

As much as I love the small herd of deer who come to visit our yard and to eat the ornamental crabapples from our tree, I'm tired of pictures of them in the snow.  I did, however, enjoy seeing a metal deer statue in Moncton, New Brunswick, during my train trip across Canada last year. Someone offered to take a picture of me, my husband Dick, and a gorilla statue at the San Diego Zoo a few years ago. (A sign warns visitors the metal statue may be hot -- but we weren't there in summer.)

Posted for the Camera Critters meme hosted by Misty Dawn. Thanks, Misty!

To see other critters from around the world, please click

HERE!

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

Two of the very best places to hunt elusive Camera Critters

Photogenic giraffes at San Diego Zoo

A family of orangutans pose for a portrait by someone's cell phone

At the Wild Animal Park (now San Diego Zoo Safari Park)
a mother rhino watches her little one feeding

Two tiny warthogs discover Mom wandering off, and prepare to follow her

Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies

Posted for the Camera Critters meme hosted each week by Misty Dawn

To see other critters captured by other cameras, please click

HERE

Critters great and small at San Diego Zoo

Great Ape talking to himself

Kay and Dick (Canadian critters) with ape statue

Two-toned Tapir from Malaya

Me? I'm merely a Meerkat!

Photos #1, #3 and #4 by Kay Davies and Richard Schear

at San Diego Zoo

Photo #2 by unknown zoo patron. Thanks, friend, whoever you are!

Posted for the Camera Critters meme, #132

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Su !

The country of China is working hard to prevent the extinction of its iconic furry creature, the Giant Panda. To that end, China has loaned breeding pairs to approved zoos where the staff will work equally hard to raise young pandas to send to China. The San Diego Zoo has "returned" two zoo-born young adults to China already, and now plans are being made to send 5-year-old Su Lin to the pandas' homeland as well.

Su Lin is "my baby panda", the only panda youngster I've seen personally, so I'm trying not to get overly emotional about "losing" her, but it isn't easy.

Dick and I took these pictures when were in San Diego for the first World Baseball Classic in 2006. They show Su Lin when she was 6 or 7 months old, an age when wild pandas spend most of their time high up in trees for safety, while their mothers look for food. So here, silhouetted against the California sky is 'Super Panda' Su, dreaming of leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

See the sky from many other points of view, also, this week at Skywatch Friday.

My love affair with pandas

A picture I like to call "Kay Day at the Zoo"!

(Richard Schear, photo)

Adult male Giant Panda "Gao Gao" munching bamboo at San Diego Zoo. Photo by Kay Davies.

I've always loved pictures of Giant Pandas, not to mention toy pandas, and was very excited to see Bai Yun, Gao Gao and Su Lin at the San Diego Zoo a few years ago. I had watched the zoo's panda cam since Su Lin's big brother Mei Sheng was born.

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/

I was so disappointed not to see any pandas when Dick and I went to China in 2008, and I'll always be sorry I'm not fit enough to return to China as a volunteer at the panda sanctuary in Chengdu. It's a new kind of travel called "voluntourism" and becoming very popular with younger, healthier people.

Today, however, the Google Giant Panda Alert in my e-mail contained photos and a video made by a couple who went to Chengdu. In the video, the husband (the photographer and videographer) is heard assuring two pandas that his wife (the volunteer panda keeper for a day) will be right back with more food for them. Their photos are excellent, and I'd like to share them with you here.

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/varnamtravels/1/1281976580/tpod.html#_