Christmas with the Animals

It was the annual Christmas party today, the one we organise for our staff's kids.

This year, on my suggestion, we decided to hold it at White Post Farm, the little sort of petting zoo long standing readers may recall me visiting a few years ago on a bright day in October. I thought it might be nice for the kids at Christmas, and so it proved, with 200 or so of them meeting the reindeer and baby goats, and going to Santa's grotto and attending Elf Academy.

Obviously, this being an event organised by me, the weather was cold and wet, with me and my manager having to stand outside for 90 minutes collecting tickets while freezing our asses off while the little ones had a good time.

However, they were the important ones and seemed to enjoy themselves a lot, so I was happy. And it is a cute place.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 21.12.19

Woo-Hoo - Bristol Zoo

So I have had an exciting weekend away visiting my sister, in a warm, sunny and very hip Bristol.

One of the conditions for my visit was that I was allowed to treat her to a visit to Bristol Zoo, a conservation zoo founded over 150 years ago and located down the hill - a long way down the hill as it turned out - from Clifton Suspension Bridge of which more later.

It was a very hot day, and this tended to make the animals rather torpid although I don't think the pride of place two asiatic lions needed much of an excuse to flake out, to be honest.

It's a long time since I've been to a zoo - probably over 20 years at least, and things have changed greatly in this time. Bristol Zoo is no longer about having the big marquee animals like elephants, big cats and other mega-fauna, but rather perhaps less glamorous species in need of conservation. Animals are sourced from rescues or other collections, no longer the wild, and the rarest creature in the place is a species of snail now classed as extinct.

However, that isn't to say there aren't some very striking animals present, and on a hot day like Easter Sunday all manner of of families were out there to see them, followed by crowds of jackdaws looking out for dropped beefburgers.

The highiight for both me and my sister was probably the penguin and seal enclosures. The penguin enclosure has a number of african penguins pottering about, but also a squadron of stunning black and grey terns that swoop around your head screaming.

We met the seals just in time for tea-time. At the sound of a whistle all 4 of these beautiful creatures stopped swimming and leapt 5 feet out of the water onto their appointed rocks, to be given mackerel in exchange for performing moves that while keeping the crowd entertained - diving, spinning on the spot, raising fins or barking - enable their keepers to assess the health of the animal.

Sentimental visitors would have enjoyed the fact that the lemurs and the golden lion tamarinds had babies. No weepies or cooing from me though, I'm made of sterner stuff. Indeed my favourite individual animal was the big silverback gorilla, who sat with his back to the visitors and deliberately refused to allow any photo opportunities of his face. My spirit animal!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 22.04.19

Home Invasion

So my sister and fiancee have arrived at my parent's house for Christmas, which is exciting enough, but they've also brought their two bengal kittens with them.

I say kittens, but at 6 months old they are great long cats, heavy with solid muscle and tails like snakes. I can hear them thundering up and down the stairs while I type this. A lampshade has already been broken; these kitties are expert climbers. Bans are in place in certain rooms with nick-nacks on shelves.

It's been a few years since there was last a cat in the house, we've all missed kitties. It's wonderful to have these furry menaces here.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 23.12.18

Mr Bear and Cheetah Cat Wishing you all the Best

I'm too hungry to do it, the folks are arguing about how to do the ham, and my sister is busy admiring the T-Shirt I designed and made for her band.

So, I leave it to Mr Bear and Cheetah Cat to wish you happy Christmas, and to encourage you to enjoy the world around you more, no matter where.

Si xxx

Thirty Years Since I’ve Been – The Natural History Museum

As you can tell with my other recent posts, I’ve been visiting London, and I felt that if I was in the city, it was a total necessity to drag my sister to visit the Natural History Museum - a place I think I last visited when I was at school in about 1984.

I was full of excitement, that quickly evaporated at the size of the queues. But they were moving quickly, and we were soon inside, confronted with the still astonishing Great Hall and its iconic brachiosaurus – inevitably seeming rather smaller than I remember it. It was surrounded by folk doing a Crystal Maze style trip round the skeleton in order to get into the Hall of the Dinosaurs, so my sister and I decided to head to the top of the museum and work our way down.

I’d forgotten that there was actually nothing at the top apart from the ancient tree trunk section. And on the level down it was the fascinating, but rather old fashioned, mineral exhibition with the gem-mier stuff in the exciting named “Vault”, the “Treasure Room” which was enjoyable, and an evolution exhibit that as ever my sister and I walked through the wrong way round.

It’s the big exhibits on the ground floor that are the problem. The blue zone has a marine life exhibition full of often model exhibits, very badly labelled and very confusing to look at. Everything is static, and lifeless, and a common recurring theme of downstairs was how dingy and threadbare everything looked. The lack of big sharks was, in my sister’s view,  unforgiveable. And a model giant squid nailed to the ceiling was no substitute.

Things get worse in the overcrowded and cluttered Hall of the Whales. Sea mammals mix awkwardly with land mammals, and the exhibit is impossible to find you way out of. We were looking for the big cats, and it took three circuits of the place before we got out.

I did love the expression on the blue whale’s face however, and spent a deal of time pretending to be the doomed sperm whale from “Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy”.

The big carnivores were the most knackered looking of all the displays. The museum has taken an ethical view – correctly – that it is not going to seek out any new big predator skins from any taxidermy specimens, and the animals are thus rather faded as a result. It was great fun drawing the tiger though, with the pencil and paper provided.

“The Cocoon” however was very different. This is the invertebrate exhibit, and consists of a wonderful curving structure internal to a modern concrete and glass section of the museum. You get an exciting view of the outside of it, and then you actually enter it to see where I think the museum views its future – digital and visual exhibits replacing actual specimens, with more emphasis on how scientists go about their work of research and taxonomy. But as a lover of butterflies and dragonflies, I was sad to not see more on view, and the ones that were unforgivably badly labelled again. Or rather, not labelled at all, or a sort of laminated folder telling you what was in the cases presented to you by a floppy haired assistant.

What’s wrong with putting a label next to the thing you are looking at? Is it so difficult?

However, in general, this is by far the best part of the museum, and presumably when more money becomes available, other areas will be likewise transformed. Although my sister would say you can put all those rats in spirit a long way out of sight, incredible resource though the spirit collection is.

The shop has moved to the other side of the hall, and if you have a pressing need for a pteranadon glove puppet, like my sister had, is ideal!

All in all, it was great to visit again after so long, but it felt so staid and conservative for the most part. But I’m curious to see how they can “get with the times” and still actually fulfil the public desire to see exhibits of real animals, or whether they can educate the public away from this perhaps ethically unsustainable approach to curation.

 Copyright Cream Crackered Nature 22/10/2013

A multitude of different coloured diamonds in the gem vault

Cocoon exterior 1

Cocoon exterior 2

Cocoon interior