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

Mama Llama!!!

Jeff Minter anyone? Ruminant fixated hippy who ran Llamasoft in the 80s knocking out C64 games like "Attack of the Mutant Camels".

Anyway, bloggeroid for some odd reason missed out my llama pictures, so here they are.

Pretty Mr Darcy

He's not allowed treats

And he has his own sign!

Greedy boss llama

Boss llama chased his pellets up and down...

Saucy eyelash flutterer

White Post Farm Visit

Yesterday, we took the olde worlde 28 double decker to past Farnsfield, sat up front up top like schoolkids, in order to visit White Post Farm.

It's been there for a long time; I remember friends of mine at school having jobs there and that was over 20 years ago, but I've never actually visited it myself until now. It was a glorious day, and the animals put on a show - bossy aggressive spitting llamas, coy alpacas happy to take your grass pellets but not let you pet them, big fat oinkers, and goats a-plenty trampling each other flat to get to your food.

I'm not a big fan of the "petting zoo" concept, but there were plenty of young children delighted to get close to the animals and it this inspires a love of wildlife, and a respect for domesticated animals into their adult lives, this is fine by me.

I think the centre needs a little bit of TLC - a lick of paint and a bit of a tidy up wouldn't go amiss in some of the areas, but I was surprised I enjoyed the day as I did.

And I'm sure my folks will look forward to eating their kangaroo sausages!

Big ugly turkey, fanning his tail constantly for his ladies

Goat mountain, Mussorgsky spent a night there. Didn't he?

Meerkat sentry. No hawks, but plenty of light aircraft for him to report

Chubster meerkat

Enjoy your mealworms chaps!

"Market?" "Meeeeeeerkat!"

Degus

Kissing harvest mice

The world looks better this way up

Green tree python

Cynical looking bearded dragon

Willow. This is a heck of a big snake

Big fat mummy oinker

Bog goat

Alpaca gets fussed over

Wallaby

Hungry goats

"Caw" cried the Rook

Fallow deer

Highland cattle

Goat attack!