Tag Archives: Critters

Black Friday 2016 at the Tulsa Zoo

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I don’t know about you but we really enjoyed Thanksgiving this year (we do every year) we had a lot smaller group than usual but we did just fine. Uncle Bob drove up from Corpus Christi and the world’s greatest MIL hosted the dinner. We enjoyed fine food and fellowship most of the day.

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The next day is the notorious Black Friday where everybody gets up terribly early and stands in line to trample their fellow humans to get half price televisions and laptops and such. Not us, we slept in. We had a guy trip to the Tulsa Zoo. No standing in lines there, easy parking, and friendly people!! I hope you enjoyed your shopping, we enjoyed our nonshopping.

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The first critter we ran into was this grizzly. He doesn’t look too happy in there all by himself.

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Next was this rattlesnake all coiled up and ready to strike. I don’t know much about rattlesnakes but I’m wondering if this is kind of an old guy judging by his filmy eyes. He might just be confused. I do geocaching and trail running and am always concerned about running into snakes. It seems we have more copperheads than rattlesnakes but I’m cautious nonetheless.

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And an American Bald Eagle. They sure do look noble.

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And a pair of American Albino Alligators. This dude is in serious need of some orthodontics.

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And a Scarlet Ibis.

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And a pic of son.

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And a Golden Headed Lion Tamarin. He doesn’t look happy either.

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And the flamingos are always cool and elegant.

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The Rhino was up and doing this thing.

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And the giraffes were reaching for their lunch.

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And the elephants were having their meal as well.

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I tried to see if the Zoo wanted this guy for the chimp exhibit. Nope, he eats too much he says.

There is a big construction project going on at the zoo. The Tulsa Zoo Lost Kingdom is going to be a huge addition with enhanced habitat for many of the critters. It is going to be finished sometime next year.

A good time was had by all. We celebrated Brother Bob’s birthday and so we had another excuse to eat well!!

I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving and a pleasant Black Friday. We sure did.

 

Saturday’s Critters – Horses

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We visited some friends last week and I took some pics of their horses. This one was at the fence and then backed off when I approached. He is not used to me.

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I stayed and talked to him and didn’t anything wild and he eventually came back.  Horses are such curious creatures. I love them and I’ll freely admit that I know next to nothing about them.

How about you? Do you like horses?

Linking with Saturday’s Critters

New Years Critters

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Here is LJ the Cat. This time of year if he is not sleeping in front of the fire he is striking poses next to the Christmas tree. Although the tree came down the other day so he is back at the fire place.

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And Ginger our rescue dachsund mix (all of our pets are mutts). She freezes all winter. Winter to her here in Oklahoma is from September through May.

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Andy Abby our fun loving dog. She is up for anything, scarves, hats, walks, adventure, she loves it all.

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And this is Rascal. We didn’t adopt him, he showed up one day and adopted us. We tried really hard for about three hours to find his owner. He is kind of our baby, he is alert, watches everyone and everything,  and is in tune with us all the time and is probably the smartest dog we have ever had.

So those are our New Year’s Critters.

Linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters

Through My Lens – A Visit to Carmichael’s Pumpkin Patch

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Sunday afternoon the family traveled from Tulsa down to the country outside of Bixby to Carmichael’s Pumpkin Patch to pick out the family pumpkins for Fall.

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We saw some greedy goats.

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And some cute little goats. At what point do they turn into shameless beggars?

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We saw a lonely, humiliated chicken sharing its space with a rabbit and a tiny little pumpkin.

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And a pot bellied pig looking a little frazzled trying to take care of her youngins. (Youngin is a word in Oklahoma just in case you are wondering. Other words have disappeared. Nobody knows what a Democrat is here any more. Except for some old timers who don’t really want to talk about it too much.

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And we saw  brahma cow. aaaa _DSC0127

And a few llamas. 

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And some youngins making a little selfie nest in the pumpkins. Aren’t they cute. I wasn’t the only one taking pics of them making a selfie. Look at the lady across the way.

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Oh yeah, we did find a couple of pumpkins!!!

Linking for the first time with Through My Lens

Saturday Critters – Essence of Bear

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This is a resident bear at Yellowstone Bear World in Rexburg, Idaho. I call the post “Essence of Bear” because I blended a drawing rendition of the original photograph with the photograph (at about a 20% drawing/80% original ratio) to bring out some of the features of the animal because the original photograph was like a silhouette of the bear with his muzzle.

Linking with Saturday Critters

Related articles

Saturday’s Critters – More Yellowstone Bear World

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As I wrote about yesterday we visited Yellowstone Bear World in eastern Idaho this past weekend. Bear World has lots of critters. I liked the bison above and appreciated him posing for me. That is a classic look. Bison have such big heads and they stand around a lot. I have always suspected that they think deep thoughts while doing so.

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The property also has elk including this white elk. Their web site explains that it is not an albino elk. I got confused about the whole thing.

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They also have about 45 bears. They were all up and moving. We have been there before and the bears were pretty sedentary, last weekend, the bears were on the prowl. It was nice seeing them so active.

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The web site explains that none of the bears were captured from the wild. They were all born in captivity.

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They had some cubs in a separate area to protect them from the adults. Is there anything cuter than a bear cub?

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And they have moose, Their is nothing ungainlier looking than a moose. Give them room though. They are notoriously bad tempered. They must be Dallas Cowboys fans. The Cowboys make all their fans cranky.

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And swans.

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And chickens

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And some ducks. Sorry about the picture of duck sex going on. I try to keep it family friendly but what the heck. 

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You know, fawns may be cuter than bear cubs. This one found a secluded spot away from everybody in the petting zoo.

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Heather and Logan found the goats.

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And Logan found a pig. He loves pot bellied pigs.

We had a great time.

I’m linking up today with Saturday’s Critters

Saturday Critters Update

Meet Cisco at #allstartherapy in #ramona #oklahoma #igersok #therapeutichorsebackriding. #horses #hoesesofinstagram

This is Cisco, the horse rides at his weekly Therapeutic Horseback Riding lesson. Cisco is a sweet horse but he is a little lazy. If I’m in the arena he always heads for me especially if Logan has zoned out in the saddle. I’ll have to say, “Hey wake up, get your horse off of me!” Oh yeah he says. Teenagers, you know what I mean.

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Here are they are in the arena, around and around they go, Logan with a big smile on his face. I’m told that that the horses head being down so low means the horse is relaxed. Sounds good to me!!

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The stables had one old kitty who was something else. He slobbered all over everything. He won a fierce fight with a hawk who tried tohaul him off and was a proficient mouser. He died last year and now they have a whole bunch of cats to replace him, all males. This one is either brave or dumb. He likes to get out in the arena and run in amongst the horses feet as they go around and around. I think he is going to be dead and we’ll never know whether he is dumb or brave. He’ll be just as dead either way so I guess that it doesn’t matter.

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This is Abby, sound asleep late at night. She is a sweetheart. She loves to eat. She got groomed yesterday so she is not as shaggy now. She is not the smartest dog we have ever had but she is very sweet. She likes to go out frequently and update her Barkbook status. Drives our neighbors crazy, me also.

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Here is a collection of photos most of them with our critters, from my new Fuji polaroid style camera. I love the pics but I’m still trying to figure out how best to post the results. It seems a lot of people just strew them similar to what I did. It seems better than scanning them one by one. Anybody else out there have such a camera? What do you do? The black dog that I’m holding is Rascal our very black pomeranian. I have to get do some sort of HDR thing with him in order to keep him from looking like a big black blob.

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters today. Go check it out.

 

Christmas Critters

We have four critters at the house these days. I mean not counting the squirrels in the back yard. Three dogs and a cat. The last couple days I posted pictures of them on Instagram in a kind of popularity contest to see who could get the most likes.  The contestants and the votes so far?

Ginger

This is Ginger, our sweet Dachsund mix rescue dog. As of Monday night she had 26 likes.

Rascal the Christmas Pom

This is Rascal, our sweet lovable Pomeranian mix who just showed up at our house. We tried really hard for about a half hour to find his owner. He is the leader as of Monday night at 30 likes.

Abigail the Christmas Dog

This is Abigail our sweet Shi-Tzu Maltese mix who was given to us by a breeder. She loves to eat and also likes a pillow when she sleeps. She is at 25 likes.

LJ the Christmas Cat

 

This is LJ, Logan’s cat (LJ is short of “Logan Junior”) he has 14 likes but I didn’t post his pic until a day after the others.

We are keeping all four the critters regardless of what happens.

What about you? Tell us about your critters.