Monday, August 15, 2011

Voyage to the Antipodes, Part Two: Awesome Australian Animals

Of all the things I saw on my voyage, I liked the kangaroos the best. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, as kangaroos have been my favorite animal ever since I first had Winnie-the-Pooh read to me at the age of three. So I was pleased to discover that they are, in fact, very personable animals, and curious about people.

This is the "Yeah? What are you staring at?" stare, which they have down to perfection.



Grazing on the lawn:



An emu. Emus, I can confirm, are not such nice animals, but they're fun to stare at.



And here is a koala, doing what koalas do best:



There were also many, many gorgeous parrots of various kinds. It was really amazing seeing all of these birds that I'd never seen outside of a pet shop.

2 comments:

Bardiac said...

So cool!

There's got to be a story behind the emu comment!

Fretful Porpentine said...

Bardiac -- Well, I went to a wildlife park, which was a bit like a zoo, only with all Australian animals, and some of them were free-range. You get a sack of kangaroo chow when you go in. So I discovered that a) kangaroos and wallabies are very sweet and pettable, though shameless beggars; and b) emus and black swans also like kangaroo chow, and are AGGRESSIVE about demanding it ... in an "OK, I'm going to throw you some roo pellets and RUN, because I can see you've got a sharp beak" sort of way.