In my continuing quest to practice what I preach, I'm making another picture post. I love seeing yours, so I ought to make my own more often. Besides, the last two times I took a lot of pictures I STILL haven't gotten around to posting, so I figure I ought to do this before the inertia gets to me.

Saturday we were pretty busy. In the afternoon we went to Animal Planet Expo (coming to a city near you!) and later that evening we hung with John, Peggy, and postrophe at the Bourgeois Pig, then went for a late dinner at the French Quarter Marketplace.

I only have pictures from the expo, and one shot of the koi at the restaurant, but if you're interested, they're behind the cut.



I tried to take a lot of .mov files, but my batteries, as usual were bitchy. I did get these cute little animatronic parrots at the front gate, though.

Birds.mov 5 meg

Jeff Corwin was there! I didn't see anything on the listings saying he was supposed to be there! We didn't meet him because there was a line, and it was mostly kids. I was amazed he was there, partially because it was so damned hot. He was a real trooper to show up and talk to kids and such. +1 Respect.



There was a demonstration of dogs doing frisbee catching tricks, but the movies all ended up long and anticlimactic...

I did get a movie of Poupon (a grey pitbull) and his owner at the misting tent. Lots of people brought pets and they had the foresight to put up a mist tent to keep them cool. Here's Poupon enjoying the mist and appreciating his owner. It's a cute one.

Poupon.mov 2.3 meg

There was a live animal show we got to see. The main gist of it seemed to be just walking around holding an animal while someone told about it, and we were hoping for more, but it was still worth the wait.

As you can see, though, it was all very DARK. This is the best picture I got of the opossum.



There was an aligator.



I had no decent pictures of the hyrax whatsoever. I tried, though.



Lastly, there was a boa. It was a short show, but hey, I'd never seen a hyrax with nothing between me and them before, so that was new.



Best picture of the set. Is this a bearded dragon? I'm not sure. Still, it's a cute lizard picture.



Let me ooouuuuuuuuut!!



There was also a hedgehog in this area of the animals to look at. He was too damned cute for a photo, though. He was eating, with his little tongue all over the food and such. I HAD to take a movie...

Hedgehog.mov 1.7 meg

Not sure the type of snake this is, but he was interesting. And you can see the water beading on him from when they were trying to keep him cool with misting.



Pandas make excellent cultural ambassadors. I just thought this was cute.



They also had a bunch of bugs displayed, including hissing Madagascar cockroaches, tarantulas and a millipede. But they're gross. So I took a picture of a monarch butterfly. Monarchs are actually totally native to the area, but we think they had only local things in case some got out ^_^



And, as promised, later I got a couple movies of koi at the French Quarter Marketplace. Here's the best one.

Frenchmarketkoi.mov 2.1 meg