Tapirs, Tamarins and Tortoises...

Cricket St Thomas was pretty much funky, lots of happy, healthy beasties running about. The weather held out surprisingly well, so most of the animals were happy to be out in the open to be seen. We saw reindeers shedding velvet, Jango the cheetah being hand fed bits of steak by his keeper, and I was impressed by this rodent anyway. He was quite friendly towards us, even when His Lordship sat by the fence with him to have a natter. Shortly after he pondered down with us to the water and spent some time trying to escape under the bridge, until he tired of it; this capybara we nicknamed "Jesus". He didn't so much walk on water, but he certainly sat on it!

Goats: turns out one of them really likes Jacobs Crackers! They say it's impossible to eat three dry Jacobs in one go, but this goat happily yomped five and went on to consume what looked like several kilos of dry food...

There were birds of all different species and colours, my favourites being the pheasants with their bright shiny plumage, about a dozen species like Swinhoe's and Firebacks, Reeve's as well as your common ones. His Lordship rather liked the kookaburra, with its cream and deep brown plumage and wickedly long, thick beak. We admired the brash colours of the macaws in shades of gold and summer skies, the rainbow of budgies and the sharp witty voices of the cockatiels...

The flamingoes were a lovely shade of carotene dye pink, busily sifting and rummaging around in the bottom of the lake, fed by the capy's stream, but it took us a lot more walking around to find the reptile den. If we weren't looking for it deliberately, chances are we wouldn't have seen it. I get the feeling it was a "takeon" house, homing as it was a pack of rather large snakes, a couple of very large iguana and a few big tortoises - I'm guessing they used to be someone's pets at one time, until they got too big. I would dearly have loved to have had a budget there, update the tanks, fancy up the Iggy hides... But there was a big tank full of fat, shiny hissing cockroaches. The Dragons would have gone nuts if we had taken them to look!

As is habit, I got bitten by an animal - this time it was a young rhea that took a shine to the buttons on my coat. Thankfully, being a baby, they're very easily distracted with long, wavy blades of grass - very tasty you see. Mind you, he's a smug little (well, big) bird, check out that grin... It did surprise me to see them wandering around with the camels, I guess I didn't think they'd get along, what with camels supposedly being bad tempered.

There was also a large gang of lemurs, huge ringtails running around where ever they felt like, as their electric fence didn't work. I get the feeling it wouldn't have been much of a deterrent either way, as they lithely hopped over it! The marmosets and other small sapien-y beasts were of very much the same mind - He and I definitely liked them best; such cheeky little characters!


Oh, we also got lost on an active, armed airforce base and wandered around for a bit until a squaddie rescued us and pointed us to the museum. The Hellcat plane was fanTAStic.