A tourist would mistake it for a circus tent

Somehow I'm overdue on pictures of my last zoo trip. Sorry for that. While I brought my tripod, I forgot the little thing to fit the camera on the tripod, which spoiled some pictures I had hoped to take, and turned the lightweight tripod into an annoying useless weight.

I start with what is not an otter, but merely a statue. Several otter statues are outside the otter and binturong enclosure, allowing people to get pictures of themselves sitting on otters without anyone being crushed or chewed. For a while the otters were just hanging around, covering the ground, chirping some. But then some twit faked throwing something in, and the otters, assuming it was food, ran off. Eventually they sort of settled down, but were left squeaky and jumpy and bitey, which admittedly isn't that unusual.

From the barbary sheep: ``Don't tell me you're stuck, Frank! If we have to call the fire department again they're going to laugh at us!'' Singapore has some polar bears, complete with the Large Arctic Rocks that cost you $250 in Zoo Tycoon. One of the bears was particularly obsessed that day with a large rubber ball, but despite his best efforts he wasn't able to climb up on it. The F&N Coca-Cola company has adopted the pygmy goats, raising the excellent yet unanswerable question of why. Picture the young, eager account executive striding in to the all-heads conference at Fraser and Neave and saying, ``Our fears are over, gentlemen -- I've got us the pygmy goats!''

The old rabbit enclosure in Children's World remains closed, as it has been since January 2004. Supposedly it's for upgrading, but given the speed with which the otters were renovated into a new place I don't know why it would take so long. Still, they have some rabbits -- a different number every time, it seems to me -- although only the picture of these two came out worth anything. The enclosure's roofed in, so it's rather dark, particularly during the afternoon thundershower. Children's World also exhibits naked mole rats, dwarf hamsters, chickens, and they had a new litter of mice too. The orange-and-white Abyssinian guinea pig in this picture waddled out from the near half of this enclosure to the far side, picked up a leaf, waddled all the way back, and set it down. Guinea pigs: the animal kingdom's answer to Adrian Monk. The shadow is because my camera flash is obstructed by my wide-angle lens.

There's an exhibit being prepared for ... I forget. I think it was for monitor lizards. At the moment it's not well-organized, but at least some of the heated rocks (in Singapore?) are working. And come feeding time at the kangaroos I got to see one poor guy getting mobbed.

Trivia: In early 1943 the War Production Board limited United States wood-cased pencil production to 88 percent of its 1941 levels. Source: The Pencil, Henry Petroski.

Currently Reading: The Box, Marc Levinson.