. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Twelve handsome oryx/gemsbok,



(Went to the Wild Animal Park" tonight and got to ride the tour bus at night and see the critters. Got to see a few gemsbok right up next to the fence, including a year-old juvenile who was very cute. This pic is from earlier this year though.)

( Eleven )

And thus concludes the 2008 12 days of zoopics. Thanks for stopping by and enjoying them, and I will now return you to your normal, non-whacked out weekly zoo pics. (Unless I manage to get my hands on a copy of photoshop; then all bets are off. Bwa ha ha ha ha.)

. . .my zoo love gave to me:

Eleven Nemos (er, false anenomefish) swimming,



(okay, yes, there are more than eleven. But they're cool. Took these at Epcot at the end of the Finding Nemo ride. There's a whole aquarium at the end. It's nifty.)

( Ten )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Ten nifty beetles,



(I love bugs. Y'all should know that by now. These were taken at the National Zoo, and are part of a, um, mosaic of sorts making up a very big beetle.)

( Nine )

. . .my zoo love gave to me:

Nine koi fish,



(These are from the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. This is actually a new batch; sadly, their older ones died because of a filter malfunction last month. Poor fishies.)

( Eight )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Eight sable antelope,



( Seven )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Seven giraffes and friends:



(There's two Nubian Soemmering's gazelles lying down on the left, they're hard to see, but I swear they're there.)

( Six )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Six creepy turtles:



( Fiiiiiiiive )

. . .my zoo love gave to me:

Fiiiiiiiive of birdhousefrog's Chickens!



(Or, at least, their eggs. Mmm. French toast with freshly laid eggs. Yummy! Okay, yeah, so I know these aren't zoo animals, but since I live in a concrete jungle they're exotic to me so you get chickens today.)

( Four )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Four bonobos:



( Three )

. . .my zoo love gave to me:

Three tiger cubs:



(Yeah, yeah, I know you just saw them, but they're cute enough to use again. And if you follow the link above, it goes to the San Diego Zoo blog on the tigers and there's a YouTube interview with a keeper about the cubs. It's fun.)

( Two )

. . .my zoo love gave to me:

Two pastel cheetahs



(No, no, just wouldn't be right not to include my favorite critters on earth.)

( And )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

A guanaco looking at me!



(and of course these all come with the caveat that I majorly tweaked the pics because I could.)

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Twelve chilly penguins,



These are at Sea World's Penguin Encounter. It's a big exhibit were you ride along on a conveyor belt and look through a window at about five different species of penguins. Kinda fun. If you've seen Happy Feet towards the end, it's a lot like that. And during my brief stint as a Sea World retail associate, I got to work in the penguin gift shop a couple times. Rather chilly in there.

Anyway. Thus conclude's this year's 12 days of Zoo-ness. Happy Holidays, y'all!

( Eleven )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Eleven hissing cockroaches, ( Read more... )

Funny thing about these bugs. When I lived in the dorms, I had one for a pet in one of those plastic cages with slitted lids. I looked in the cage one day, and *poof* I had 30 baby Madagascan hissing cockroaches. Next day I had about half that many--seems the little buggers escaped. I found a few, but I never did find them all. My dorm-mates didn't exactly appreciate knowing that. Eventually the ones I had left all died because I fed them some flower that turned out to be poisonous to them.

( Ten )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Ten pink flamingos,



If you count the close-up ones, there's ten. Yeah. The larger the number,the harder it is to find critters in that number, but there's always a ton of flamingos right at the zoo entrance.

( Nine )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Nine sable antelope,



These are still some of my favorite animals, but they're all the way up at the Wild Animal Park now, and much, much harder to get a good pic of. Not that I get to see any hoofed critters at the zoo for about another year, because they're redoing the whole horn and hoof mesa section.

( Eight )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Eight moray eels,



These are at Sea World. Very creepy. They're in an underground aquarium with equally creepy music playing.

( Seven )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Seven cormorants,



(There are two hiding in the nest on the right that are a bit hard to see. This would also be considered a gulp of cormorants. More fun names of animal groups.)

( Six )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Six addaxes,


(looking a bit ghostly, here . . .)

( Five taaaaaaaallll )

. . . my zoo love gave to me:

Five taaaaaaaallll giraffes!



(oh. And I just added links to all the critters so you can find out more about them.)

( Four )