Franklin Park Zoo in October?

Sure, why not? In the middle of everything else, my cousin and her daughter were visiting and this was the only chance I'd get to bond with them.  And the giraffes were out!

Franklin Park Zoo Sketches!

Right then. Time for a massive Sketchdump! Everything's hosted at Flickr so click for the normal size pictures.













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Shortly after returning home from the Zoo, I played with my semi-neglected, just-there-to-follow-people Twitter. Just for fun, here are the tweets, reposted in a way where they will hopefully actually make sense:

Trish - And now using my Animorph powers I bring you ZooTweets! Or, "What 'Zookeeper' Would be Like if Trish Wrote it (which thank God she didn't)"

Hooded Merganser - Consarn it, I am not "just a duck"! There's 400 species of us! You got that giant mutant brain, why don't you f***ing learn something?

Tawny Frogmouth - Please, for the love of God, stop hooting at us.

Baird's Tapir - Things I've been identified as today because parents can't be arsed to read the f***ing sign: a pig, an elephant, a bear, Alf...

Green Anaconda - "Ahh, a giant snake!" You know what? I get it. I hear it all the damn day. I know everyone hates me, why remind me?

Ring-Tailed Lemur Couple - Yeah, we're just gonna spoon in front of your kids. Maybe do other things. Hope you parents don't mind.

Christopher the Lion - Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Day Gekko - STFU ABOUT CAR INSURANCE!!! I get it, God!

Sleeping African Wild Dogs - So I guess it's cool if I come bark outside your window while you sleep, yah?

Capybara - Capybara don't give a f***.

Red Pandas - The hell we're not "real pandas"!

Ostrich - (Stands right up next to the fence and *stares* at you long enough to realize you are a mammal looking at a dinosaur...)

Trish - This has been ZooTweets! A collection of Tweets based off the most redic things I overheard at the Zoo today.

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In lieu of the Sketch of the Day, I bring you this lovely short film made by a father-son team, shared recently by the usually snarky Topless Robot. It takes a minute or two to find it's footing, but if you aren't misty-eyed after the events that follow the soccer scene, I don't trust you.

(Disclaimer: I was weeping openly by the end and I don't have kids. According to some of the comments on TR, this is much, much rougher for people who do. Just warning you.)



(If you need a laugh after this, one that also involves a little kid with God-tier powers, Everything is Terrible is here for you.)

Let's Take Pictures at the Franklin Park Zoo!

Recently, I returned to the Franklin Park Zoo to tour with some friends who had never been. I took lots of pictures (which you'll see in this post) and of course did a lot of sketches (saving those for the next post) and met lots of interesting people (oh, they'll be in both posts.)

So first off, this giant hay sculpture which greeted us upon entrance to the Zoo. It's here to celebrate the arrival of the newest additions to the FPZ family: a pair of Red Pandas. It's also bound to scare children.

Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way.



Okay. So, the last time we went to Franklin Park, a large portion of the Zoo was closed off so that the movie "Zookeeper" could be filmed there. As you may imagine, the Zoo has a pretty ambivalent relationship with the movie. On the one hand, certainly attendance has gone up. On the other, how sick do you suppose they are of fielding questions like, "But where are the elephants?" and "You don't really feed the gorillas chain restaurant food, do you?"

Speaking of signs that raise unsettling questions...





So how often do people wear high heels in the Zoo that it's enough of an issue to warrant mention here? And ye Gods, squirt guns?!? Man, I thought the grown-a** adults banging on the glass or clapping or yelling at the sleeping animals were bastards! (Especially since one such character acted all p*ssy like *I* was in the wrong for asking them to quit it. I'll say it again and I won't apologize. There are times when you wouldn't want to witness people getting messily mauled by angry animals and then there are times like this...)

But we're not here to watch humans acting like bastards; we're here to be mammals looking at dinosaurs!



As I mentioned before, the Franklin Park Zoo has a truly awesome Aviary. Apparently, and this is based off the testimony of older relatives who visited often when they were younger, this is the oldest part of the Zoo. Currently, it houses everything from Tawny Frogmouths to these Gouldian Finches. I wonder how many people don't know these little fellows were NOT entirely made up by that printer ad campaign?



Okay, who taunted the gorillas?



Aw, wah. I was looking forward to seeing these guys again. I love that FPZ houses an excellent selection of my favorite animals, none of which are particularly popular.



Which is to say, this is the place to get a plush version of your favorite unpopular endangered species.



These Peafowl were free-roaming throughout the "children's" zoo, which seems to me like a disaster in the making. Now, is this fellow moulting or just growing in a new train?



This Ostrich walked right up to the fence to size me up, it seems. I calmed down quick enough to sketch like crazy and take some reference pictures.



Et voila, Ostrich feets! Note to self: use this next time you draw tyrannosaurus feet.

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Sketch of the Day!

Bwahaha...

I went to the Franklin Park Zoo.

First off, this song is dedicated to everyone who I hope saw the same cold white stuff I did yesterday:



I went to the Zoo! Then I went home and wrote a picture-heavy post about it.



Naturally, I did a lot of sketching at the Zoo. I think this was maybe the second time I've ever been to Franklin Park and maybe the fourth or fifth zoo I've ever been to. (We could argue all day about what constitutes a zoo, but I'm counting traditional "animals from all over the world here for you to learn about" zoo: the maybe two times I've been to FPZ, the one time I've been to Roger Williams Park Zoo, and a zoo I randomly visited while randomly in Indiana.) The thing I have to point out is this:

NOBODY noticed me drawing.

That was actually pretty disconcerting after a while.

(I did meet one nice lady to whom I gave my postcard because You Never Know. And there was one more typical guy who asked, "What're ya gonna do with those drawings?" I didn't know how to answer that one, but at least it was original.)



My aunt and I were the only adults visiting the zoo without being accompanied by a herd of small children, which helps explain things. It's funny how all the people at FPZ were either parents or children under the age of, say, seven (maybe. See, I lack whatever intuition normal women have that allows them to judge a child's age at a glance.) Point is, it made me feel a little sad that there weren't many older children or younger adults. It's not like there's an age where humans outgrow seeing live animals.

Is there?





Photography at the zoo tends to be more socially acceptable but is, as you can see, a dicey proposition. If I knew how to build a newfangled high tech camera, I'd add a feature where you could tell it to focus on the leopard or the Kea, not the fence behind which the leopard or the Kea lives. Duh.



That said, I can't tell you how happy I was to see these guys. I actually didn't even know about Ground Hornbills until I read Tetrapod Zoology's excellent article about them (this is the older, somewhat more evocative version). I wish I could print out copies and hand them out in front of this exhibit to get people to linger her a bit longer instead of rushing to the next Obligatory Big Famous Mammal; they really are fascinating in action. This guy played with a patch of grass for a good twenty minutes.





The Franklin Park Zoo, overall, is awesome for those of you wanting to be a mammal staring at dinosaurs. They do have the aforementioned Obligatory Big Famous Mammals (Lions and Tigers and Zebras and Giraffes and Gorillas and so on - not knocking them, it's just that they're so popular.) However, they have a stunning variety of birds. They have a fantastic aviary and a walk-through tropical forest which is worth the price of admission in itself. And it's open nearly all the year, which is fascinating to me.

I may have to revisit the Ostriches when it snows, see how they cope with it.

And here are my favorites among the many sketches I drew at the Zoo. Click these thumbnails to see the normal sized drawings:



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You may have heard of this Design a "Simpsons" Character contest. If not, here is a brief explanation with a perfect accompanying image. This makes me actually feel a little sad, because I would have be ALL OVER THIS CONTEST - in High School.
But now? Well, now I'm just, "m'eh."