El Valle Zoo

Although I already went to Santa Clara with Carolyn, we took an IP trip last weekend to El Valle and Santa Clara. I already have plenty of good pics up from Santa Clara, so everything here is from the zoo in El Valle. I'll be going back to El Valle sometime and have more pictures of the actual valley to show.

There's a pic of a golden frog crawling around on the glass. They're believed to be extinct in the wild. There's a massive preservation project at this zoo. Essentially there's a fungus or something that's wiping them out. They've quarantined a bunch of them unaffected by the fungus and are planning to reintroduce them once the fungus moves on. What makes them think the fungus will ever "move on", I have no idea...

I few owls annoyed by the bright light and people trying to get their attention. Can't say I've ever seen an owl this close up though.

Ok, so you have no reference to see how huge this rooster is, but trust me when I say it is on sttinken GINORMOUS rooster. If you've known me long, you probably know that I HATE roosters/have traumatic memories of a rooster trying to kill me (not to be confused with the goose that tried to kill me). I was a little worried that bird was going to flump over the fence just to try to kill me. It was eying me the whole time I was trying to get a picture.

I don't know what those things are, I assume some type of monkey. I just thought they were cute together, one protecting the other from my camera.

I have no idea what this thing is, there was no sign. At first I thought this thing was hideous. A disgusting mix of an anteater, possum, and rat. After I stared at it for a while though, I started to think he was a little cute. Definitely curious and pretty friendly too.

So it's not a goose... but it's big and it's a bird and that's enough reason for me to hate it. It's trying to attack some poor kid who only wants to feed it.

There's a gray one. Don't be confused by the pictures, I never got close to these things. Just used zoom. And I had a firm grasp on my knife, ready to kill any bird that tried to kill me.

That ones for Mommy. It's a really big orchid. It's called the Holy Ghost Orchid. It's actually in bloom, but since they had more fencing around this thing than they did around the painted leopard, I was unable to get a macro shot of the flower.

Look at the cute little leopard. He's just begging someone to stick their hand over there to pet him... So he can bite it off. Seriously. A chain link fence which any 2 year old could fit an arm through. Kindof neat, especially to see the little kitty sticking his paws though.

This one just wants to sleep in his little house. Isn't he so cute? Looks just like a cute little kitty you could adopt from the humane society; except from those teeth you can see protruding from its mouth.