For Valentine's Day...

...Some atrocious puns just for you!

I like lion around with you.



You belong to my hart.



I udderly adore you.



Llama give you a kiss.



{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Mommy Deerest

(It’s not the perfect opportunity, but I’ve been wanting to use that pun for years.)

Today Annie and I explored the natural areas around our new home by trekking around Sligo Creek Trail for a couple of miles. Right before we turned around to head back to our non-nature responsibilities, we spotted these deer in the undergrowth (er, is overgrown undergrowth “overgrowth”?) beside the path.

To be fair, we spotted them because another woman on the trail was taking photos of them with her camera, and we followed her gaze.

With a few contortions, I managed to extract my camera from my bag without making too much noise, but of course modern cameras in and of themselves make a fair amount of noise—beeping to assure you they’re in focus, making shutter-clicking noises, etc.

In spite of this, the deer seemed remarkably unaffected by all this digital noise, although they did occasionally pause in their chewing to examine us (especially when the other photographer’s phone went off).

We were surprised to see a stag so near what looked like a doe and almost-grown faun, but a little online searching revealed that white-tailed deer start mating in November, so perhaps the two of them were preparing.

And apparently fauns stay with their mothers for 1-2 years, so perhaps the younger one was hanging out and making grossed-out noises every time the adults made moves on one another.

Or maybe they were just hungry and in the same area.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wild Wildlife

I admit, I didn’t see the mantis myself. Instead, I saw a man holding his young son up as they both peered into the grasses growing alongside the path to the “Great Cats” enclosures. I was curious but didn’t want to pry—until I heard the little boy exclaim loudly to the world, “It’s a PRAYING MANTIS!!!”


Everyone else, focused on large mammals, paid no attention, and in a moment the boy and his father, too, moved on. But I stopped to observe the mantis as it made its way up and around various grasses, sometimes clinging, sometimes climbing, depending on the force of the wind that tossed the stems hither and thither.



Nor did I see the first of these three little frogs, balancing like sentinels on the lily pads of the water around Lemur Island—my mother noticed them. (She’s always had a fondness for frogs, in spite of a traumatic childhood encounter when, as she tried to chuck one under the chin, it bit her.)


But I did see this squirrel, gnawing and chittering on a tree behind the small-mammal house:



And I spotted this deer gamboling along in the vast new (and otherwise empty) elephant yard:


“You’re not an elephant!” I told it, but this did not seem to make much of an impression on the ungulate.

And finally, freezing my fingers off as I took (not very good) pictures of a yellow-bellied sapsucker (the best-named bird ever), I got a decent shot of a white-breasted nuthatch:

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Too Bad We Ran Out of Film

When I was nine, my parents and I spent a week in Rome on vacation. We had a great time, in spite of the broiling heat, the World-Cup crowds, and the fact that the best meals we had were at a Chinese restaurant. We also took a lot of pictures—well, I say “we”; in fact my parents took a lot of pictures. I think my contributions were a couple of poorly focused shots, one of my parents and one of some pigeons in a piazza.

On our last full day we ran out of film. (Some of you may remember the days when cameras used “film” to record images.) It was the end of the trip, so it didn’t seem worth it to buy a whole new roll for just that day—and so we didn’t. But, of course, we saw plenty of places and things that were worthy of photographs, and our litany became “Too bad we ran out of film!” It turned into a catch-phrase joke that we’ve used then and since for years.

In these digital times it’s rare to run out of memory for images, but now photo enthusiasts are far more likely to suffer another sort of setback: having their camera batteries die. Since we’ve moved to DC my camera’s batteries have run out any number of times, but there are only three occasions that really stand out in my mind as being particularly frustrating.

The first was in May; I was walking along the part of the rock-creek parkway that skirts the zoo, and there across the creek I spotted a fox—a real live wild fox, not affiliated in any way with the zoo (unless it was planning a visit). I turned on my camera and took a quick shot before the camera was done focusing—and that was the only image I got, because the damn thing unceremoniously shut down, and in spite of all my pleas and attempts to turn it back on, the view-screen remained dark, the little line of text announcing sternly, mercilessly: “charge batteries.”


I never saw the fox again.

Just a couple of weeks ago, after I’d made my loop through the zoo and was on my way towards the back exit and home, I saw the baby gorilla playing with an adult—I think her mother—lying down next to her, then rolling around in the grass and throwing herself on the adult—behaving like an adorable youngster. Guess what happened when I tried to record this event.


And just this past week I started an early walk in the zoo, feeling virtuous and sleepy, and spent a little too long taking pictures of sun-bathing lemurs. –I say too long because, just as I started to get further into the zoo, I spotted a deer and her half-grown fawn strolling by the concession stand. I rushed for my camera, quickly changing the ISO to capture a picture in the low light—and was told that my batteries were dead. I managed to coax a single, poor shot out of the camera before it shut itself down.


Now, I’m not saying that I’d rather not have seen the cool animals and behaviors I’ve witnessed—better to have seen them than not. And it’s a pleasure to be able to relate them, even without accompanying images. I still remember our trip to Rome, too, and the gelateria we found on our last day, even though there’s no photographic evidence of the place.

Still, it’s too bad we ran out of film.

[another situation, a different day;
still, I did want some image
to illustrate this with]

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}