Thursday, May 22, 2008

Kyra's 9th Birthday





For Kyra's birthday we spent the day at Dubbo zoo, in Dubbo. The zoo is laid out in a 6 km loop that you can walk, drive, or bicycle around. We took our house around, stopping to wander amongst the animals. Many of the fences around the animals were dug down in a trench so they didn't obscure your view.
Kyra had wanted a camera for a long time and was very excited to open one in the morning and then have a whole zoo to photograph. That is a black swan behind her, they are very common all over Australia. At lunch time Kyra was busy feeding and photographing a bunch of Apostle birds (crow-like scavengers often in groups of 12) so Mercedes helped us decorate the van with balloons and light the cake candles. Surprise!
The tortoises were great, especially this one that watched us as much as we watched him or her. We could reach over and rub her shell and she would look us at us, slowly, to show she could feel it. What a neat, ancient creature. We got to feed the giraffes carrots. As you can see their tongues are long, curling around the carrot to pull it away. They would run around and knock eachother with their heads, all of the action looked like slow motion with their long limbs. Another favourite was the family of Siamang apes (or monkeys?). We'd never heard of them before. They ran and swung on ropes, and whooped and hollered so you could hear them from far away. They put on quite a show.

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