December 13, 2001, Part 2
We got home late from Sea World, anxious to make it to the San DiegoWild Animal Park in Escondido the next day. They opened at 9AM and we were there shortly after. We find that no matter what the venue we're attending, there's always more to do and see than we can get done in a day.
OK now, you'll have to indulge me. I like to look at wildlife. I don't necessarily have any decrease in my pleasure because I don't know their names. So a white tiger, like the one in the picture on the left is a white tiger. Period. And I liked watching it fuss around being a white tiger (it had just been tossed a hunk of raw meat). And I've seen white tigers before and they may have been a different name or come from a different place, but like the rhinos on the right, I just enjoy watching them. (Knowing how many hours are on my generator and when to change its oil is important to me.) And the baby rhino was totally frustrated in its attempt to get its mother on her feet. The person driving the tour train we were on was kind enough to answer a question I'd had for some time: What's the difference between black and white rhinos? They all look kinda gray to me. Seems that the location they live in give rise to some "real" differences, but mostly the black ones are called that because the ones the Europeans first saw had been rolling around in coal dust and looked black! And the white ones are called that because the English speaking people were listening to the Dutch speaking people, and the Dutch word for "wide" sounded like "white" to the English speaking people the first time they saw them. Ah, well, now you see why I don't put a lot of stock on the Latin names for these guys!! I have trouble enough speaking, spelling, and writing the U.S. version of English!!
Now this baby rhino was having a ball. It was old enough to be a bit independent of its mother and was running around harassing everybody in sight. Hard to believe that these short-legged rather stout looking animals can go 35 mph when they get up to speed. Trouble is, they can only see about 30 feet in front of themselves, but fortunately all the other animals in the compound know that and get out of the way. Even this pesty little guy could shoo everybody else (except other rhinos) away from the feed bins. We were impressed with the huge open areas shared by so many different kinds of animals. The separation between predator and prey was obvious and necessary, but with that exception, the separations were minimal.
On the left are a couple of trees that were in stark contrast to their surroundings. The desert in this area is mostly gray and brown, but there were these deciduous trees doing their annual ritual of showy coloration before dropping their leaves. On the right, how many sheep can you see? I'm not sure how many are in this picture either, but there are more than are easily seen. These guys blend in so well that even after staring at the rocks for several minutes I was still missing some until they moved. Fine hunter I turned out to be!!
On the left is a man-made carcass that meat is put on for feeding the vultures. Only that's an egret standing on the rock! The vultures are sitting on their nests just below the feeding station, in the picture on the right. There's two of them, and they blend in pretty well, but not as well as those sheep above.
Why is it the kids are always a nuisance to everybody? In this case it's a young giraffe chasing the ostriches away from a feed bin. Seems the giraffes like bothering the ostriches, except one big old giraffe who is missing the tassel on his tail. Seems one big old bird took exception to the giraffe bothering him, and took a healthy bite out of the end of his tail. This kid hasn't learned anything from his elders I guess. And on the right are two of only 9 of these particular kind of rhinos left in the world. These two are females, and the park people are hopeful because they have a male that they just got from another facility that is in quarantine at the moment. He was very productive at his last facility, and these people, like ones at Sea World, are pretty good at helping animals reproduce. Without some offspring, this branch of the rhino world will disappear within 10 to 15 years.
Vultures, a couple of Okapi and a Hornbill. The Okapi looked like they'd been made from spare parts of other animals, but what beautiful coats they had. Incredible tongues--they could lick their ears!! Their coat was fuzzy and looked like velour. Cow type feet, horse type bodies, caribou type heads, mule type ears (sort of), and markings from all over the animal world. First we'd ever seen them; we spent quite a bit of time just staring at them.
Barb by some plaster Ostrich eggs, and then the free-flight bird show. First of its kind we'd ever seen. We'd seen some birds fly to and from perches behind the audience, but never had we seen so many birds just flying around during the show. Before it started there was a Macaw circling the area, a flock of homing pigeons, and a small hawk just flew around from perch to perch. These parrots were fun to see and listen to, and the Amazon Gray on the left is like one we'd seen featured in a wildlife TV show. Incredible vocabulary and quick thinking. The trainer would ask a question, the bird would answer, the trainer would ask another question and the bird would answer, e.g., Trainer, "Cow", bird "MOOOO", trainer "Dog", bird "BOW WOW," etc. for quite a while. And fast, too.
Careful now, or you'll get the impression that Jeff liked his job. The bird with the huge wingspan is a Andean Condor (not the California Condor) and is young and not very well trained yet. It was fun to watch it lope along with its funny (to us) gait. And the young lady has an emu. It was born in 1943, and the park got it in 1979. And for 20 years they've been trying to train it to go here or there to get its food, but it doesn't remember very well. It still can't find the door to get back into its compound! They made lots of fun of it, and it didn't seem to mind. They claimed that every day is a new one for it, and so every day it gets 4 new friends (there's two shows a day, but the same two trainers at each show). She's showing us its 6" wings in this particular picture.
They had some magnificent raptors there, and the markings on this one were incredible. The balloon had a cage tied to the bottom with a raptor in it. Small fellow, and on cue they opened the door, the bird came out in a dive, caught the leather "toy" that a trainer had thrown in the air, and took it to the canopy over our head and tried to tear it apart. Again, a bird in free flight "doing its thing" for us to watch. It dove so quickly I didn't get a picture, and the canopy was in the sun so I couldn't get a picture of it up there either. The trainers said it dove at over 90 MPH and I could believe it.
On the left, Barb has just fed the giraffe a food pellet ( boy, do I look fat in that picture! bj). Two pellets for a dollar. Barb is usually drawn to little fuzzy animals and birds. You know, things smaller than herself. But like all husbands, I don't understand my wife completely. She likes giraffes too. Oh well. On the right is the trunk of a gum tree. Going up the tree are two columns of ants. At the base there are actually 3, but they blend into two quickly.
And those two columns continue up to the crotch of the tree, maintaining their distance from each other the whole way up. And one column isn't the "up" trail and the other one the "down" trail. Both columns had ants going both ways and bumping into each other in the process. Amazing what you can see at a wild animal park. Like the two lionesses on the right. They had about a 10 acre parcel they shared with a male we'd seen at a considerable distance in the morning, but these two graced us with their smiles as we were taking the afternoon train ride around the park. Duplicate ride from the morning, but I was worn out from walking all day and this seemed like a fun thing to do again.
AHA!! A "freeloader"! Not one of "their" animals, but a Calif. Mule Deer that had simply jumped the fence and was mooching free food. Made my trigger finger itch and my mouth drool. Nice specimen. Didn't take him long to make himself disappear into the brush, either. On the right is a shot from one end of this large compound. The park is large, open, well laid out (in our in-expert opinion) and fun to see. They planted grasses that do well in this area, but require a permit to plant because of its extensive root structure, and irrigate as necessary to keep it green.
And as a closing shot, the little rascal that was running around harassing everybody was getting his (or her) dinner. Turned out this offspring was the 15th this particular rhino had. She had the system down pretty good I'd say.