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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

35. Go to the Living Desert in Palm Springs to see a mountain lion

Finished the first of my 50 goals in 500 days, albeit with one major change.  The Living Desert is kind of a zoo down by my parent's house in Palm Springs.  They have all sorts of kickass animals, including giraffes, badgers, bobcats, cheetahs...but no mountain lions.  They used to have one, but it died, rendering the completion of this goal in it's purest form, all but impossible.  I'm counting it anyway.
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In addition to all the caged monsters, we found a pretty large snake cruising around unsupervised.  My Dad poked at it a little bit, which led to a few other folks to look at him like he's crazy.  I don't think he can help it though.  One time when we were at a pond in New York, he saw a turtle floating around in the middle of it.  My Dad slipped into the water, paddled slowly up to it, and caught it from behind.  It was pretty awesome.  In this particular snake adventure, he did not get bit.
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Most of the animals were just chilling out because of how hot it was, but we hung out with a badger for 15-20 minutes.  He would dig like crazy, and then fill in the hole...and then dig again, rinse and repeat.  I have a feeling he wasn't very smart.  Every now and again he would look up at us, show his teeth, and do some little wiggle that I expect was his version of the Haka.
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7 comments:

Allison said...

You seem to have a lot of run-ins with snakes. Yikes.

Juliana said...

Uummmm.... I dunno about this. The "go to living desert" part is way easier than the " to see a mountain lion" part, so if you really wanna challenge yourself, #35 is still undone. Unless you're feeling REALLY lazy.

Thanks for pointing out the snake so effectively. *ahem*

Andhari said...

Not feeling the snake but I wanna pet the cheetah :)

Alison said...

I'm sorry for your mountain lion loss, i sense your pain.

Cheetah's are COOL though, i played with some cubs in S Africa and will share with you some cheetah trivia i learned:
- All cat species either purr or roar but cannot do both, cheetah's purr (the cubs do a lot)
- The black tear markings around their eyes act as sunglasses, absorbing light and enabling them to see better in bright sunlight
- They can cover 8m in a single stride
- They can accelerate to 70mph in seconds
- They are built for flight not fight and will not defend their kill if another predator tries to take it, or go after prey if they think it is protected/ can defend itself.
(educational aren't i?)

IS that some sort of weedy desert badger?? It looks none too bright - must be a very distant relative of its vicious English cousin.

Martin said...

Allison - Now that you mention it...

Juliana - Tough crowd here...the only way to accomplish this goal to the letter of the law would be lure a mountain lion into the zoo, or wait for one to randomly wander in. Can I get a pass on this one? And I am glad you like my MS Paint skills :)

Andhari - Me too!

Alison - VERY educational, thanks. Yeah, that badger...he was a little slow I think.

Anonymous said...

Me thinks that Martin's new totem animal is a badger....

Anna said...

I can't see or discuss a badger without thinking of this:

http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/