Merry Christmas, dear ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger. Thank you for wanting to spend it with me.
We try to get to the Potter Park Zoo's Wonderland of Lights every year. Usually we go between Christmas and New Year's. No chance of that this year; the event, normally held Thursdays through Sundays, was closing for the season the 23rd. Probably from not wanting to get the staff back together for a short operating week between Christmas and New Year's. Well, we can get there before Christmas, if we absolutely must. We chose to go Sunday night, even though it'd be a short trip --- bunnyhugger was working at the bookstore until early evening --- but I figured a short visit was better than none, and if something went wrong Sunday we'd have a backup date of Thursday. Thursday, it turned out, would get cancelled by the snowstorm, and I think Friday was too, so we got there what turned out to be the last day of the Wonderland.
Once again the Potter Park Zoo marked out a one-way path for people walking around the zoo. This started in 2020, back when we were still trying a little to contain the pandemic and crowd flow control seemed a useful tool. Not sure why it's still there except maybe it's proved a way to make it easier to tell when the place has cleared? There were complaints online that the number of lights had reduced, but I don't think it was by anything significant. I realized afterward there were two fixtures we hadn't seen. Some illuminated peacocks in the windows of one of the buildings were gone, but they were replaced by new illuminated penguins, so that's a wash. There was also this illuminated ballerina figure and I don't remember seeing that at all, but it's no great deal to change a couple figures out.
We had a harder time seeing animals. Most of them are in winter quarters, of course, but we had no luck spotting the arctic foxes, or the otters, or the wolves, which we usually get at least some dim glimpse of. There were some elk, but way off in the farthest part of their pretty large enclosures, doing that traditional zoo thing where they stay as far from the people as they can. In the feline-and-primate house the Amur tigers were nowhere to be seen. The big exception to all this was the snow leopards. One was out in the cold, sitting atop a rock and making those plaintif mrowls that sound like they really, really want you to ask who they're subtweeting.
There were a couple other nice spottings of animals inside the couple of buildings. Like, in the golden tamarind enclosure was ... well, a porcupine. If there were a tamarind in there we didn't see it. But we did spot a mouse running around, just like we saw in that same enclosure last year. Nice to see the mouse has made a good cozy home.
It was all pretty good weather for walking around the zoo by night. Cold, yes, but not bitterly cold or cold to where it'd feel dangerous. We were still very glad to have hot chocolate twice along our walk. The only down side is there wasn't any snow on the ground. This made the path, particularly the hills upward, safer, but less photogenic. Also on the paths: they had a bunch of signs saying they were aware of the condition of their walkways and there'd be improvements next year. If I'd known I might have taken some pictures of rough patches of asphalt, because I am like that, although by the time I noticed these signs my camera was complaining of a critically low battery. I would have sworn I'd charged it up to full, and I didn't take that many photographs compared to what I can do when I really try. I am going to suspect the camera was having some issue with the cold, but it is getting up there in age, as cameras go, and it might be wanting replacement, if you can get decent consumer-grade cameras anymore.
Though we had less time than usual, we were able to make two full circuits of the zoo before they turned the public audio off. And we stopped into the building where they do special events, where we were too late to get in on the Christmas-ornament-making station. We were able to chat some with the people showing off animal skulls and pelts and feel just, you know, how solidly warm the otter fur is. They had to see us squirt sanitizer on our hands before we could touch the pelts, I suppose like the one-way paths a thing that started for the pandemic and just kept going.
The zoo had several penny-stamping machines. I had a couple pennies. We only used the one station, though, near the food stand. The penny stamped well, but it was a challenge to find: the machine spat it out so fast it fell out of the coin tray and disappeared. A couple people also looking to stamp coins joined in looking, and couldn't find it; one offered a replacement penny so we could try again. I finally thought to shine my iPod flashlight into the space underneath the machine and there it was. It must have bounced off bunnyhugger's legs or shoes. You don't expect those penny stamp machines to be quite so caffeinated.
We were glad to have gotten a visit even if it wasn't quite two hours. It was one of the few really Christmas-y things we got to do around bunnyhugger's heavy work schedule. And, knowing that Thursday and maybe Friday would have been impossible, we're really glad to have gotten there.
Here's some more pictures from Halloweekends. Pictures from the Wonderland of Lights will be along, in time.
Some of the gravestone props used to spruce up dull patches of the Frontier Trail. None of them have funny names.
Turkey! This guy that we met in early September could not be coaxed to come out and maybe be head-petted because he already had food and privacy.
Turkey sitting up and wondering what my problem is.
The turkey decided my problem was not worth interrupting lunch for which, fair.
bunnyhugger tries to talk the turkey out of seclusion, but does not succeed.
Here's some of the other animals in the 'historic' zoo. You know, like how those early-19th-century Ohio farmers kept llamas.
Trivia: Up to 1826 the Michigan Territory (the lower peninsula) comprised two counties: Wayne and Washtenaw. Source: The Bicentennial History of Ingham County, Michigan, Ford Stevens Caesar. (So says Caesar. Wikipedia says Mackinac, Macomb, St Clair, and St Joseph counties had been organized by 1822, when Washtenaw County was first authorized. It's possible there's differences in precise definitions, though; Wikipedia says Washtenaw was, after its definition, still attached to Wayne County for 'revenue, taxation, and judicial affairs', which seems like a lot of what the point of a county even is.)
Currently Reading: King of All Balloons: The Adventurous Life of James Sadler, the First English Aeronaut, Mark Davies.
