Today we went down to Drusilla's Park, a zoo/park/playground down near Eastbourne, so that Alex could have his "Meerkat Experience" which was a belated birthday treat, bought using nectar points (we originally had something else in mind, but for various reasons it didn't work out, so this was the substitute excursion).
His experience included learning about the animals' feeding routines [this wasn't for the meerkats, necessarily, though they are mainly carnivores - but the sign amused me],
a behind-the-scenes tour, preparing the food for the meerkats' snack - which included catching a number of locusts and crickets -
somewhat easier said than done, as the locusts and crickets liked to hop around and didn't much enjoy being picked up and popped in a plastic bottle -
and filling some baskets with hay and hiding some grapes inside. This was much easier to accomplish, as the grapes were far less interested in jumping out of the plastic bottle than the locusts had been...
Alex then took the snacks to the meerkat enclosure and was able to feed them to the meerkats. The meerkats were very keen on having their snacks - in fact, Alex wasn't quick enough giving out the crickets and locusts, so one of them decided to have a nibble of Alex...
So Alex's meerkat experience included a bonus meerkat bite and an extra tour of the staff first aid cabin. Luckily, it was a small bite and only hurt for a little while. And his tetanus is up to date, so there should be no problems...
The meerkats enjoyed the grapes - here they are trying to figure out how many meerkats can fit into a single hanging plant basket at one time - I think the answer was about five...
play on all the (rather impressive) playground climbing equipment,
ride on Thomas trains
and eat hot dogs.
Oh yeah, and see some animals!
The zoo had mostly small and/or domestic animals - farm animals, llamas and so on, then mammals such as raccoons, coatis, small monkeys like tamarins and squirrel monkeys, gibbons, macaques, beavers, otters, meerkats and prairie dogs, and birds like flamingoes, lorikeets, owls, a few penguins. And a selection of reptiles, amphibians, insects, etc. The sort of animals it's fairly practical to have in a space which is large but not huge.
We enjoyed watching all these ring-tailed lemurs sleeping in a pile. The zoo had a lovely lemur enclosure (the walk-in kind) with lots of climbing equipment and playing & hiding areas for the lemurs, but all they wanted to do was sleep in a big pile. Admittedly, it was midday or thereabouts and actually warm and sunny for once...
There were a couple of red pandas - new this year, apparently - who were sleeping the first time we went past their enclosure, but were a bit more active the second time around.
I enjoyed this Emperor tamarin and his (her?) fantastic moustache.
And after quite a wait, I manage to get the owl to actually look at the camera!
The flamingos, on the other hand, weren't bothered about having their photos taken - unlike Sarah, who will probably be annoyed that I posted a photo of her eating a hotdog, so to make up for it, here's another photo of her, this time, taking a photo of flamingos...
Alex and Olivia were far happy to pose for photos, especially if they could be shown with Ferenc Fox ears...
In all, a fun day despite the injuiry, and so nice to be outside in the sunshine!
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