howdy

Sorry this took so long to get to, Monday I had to take my Mom to the hospital for some tests unexpectedly. Nothings wrong, she's doing fine, just the kinda stuff that happens when you have cancer. they just expect you to run around constantly in the frigid cold. And yesterday was my book club.

So anyway, Penguin day. We got to the aquarium a bit early, so we had to wait around for awhile. but finally we got to go out to the penguin house. Andrew and I were in the first group that went inside to learn about how the penguins are cared for and such. a few penguins were inside, and we got to take pictures of them.

The green mat is where they sleep, evidently they are territorial, and if someone gets too close to a penguin's chosen mat, they get bit. LOL which kept happening to the biologist, the one penguin didn't like when she got close to the mat.

These penguins are warm weather penguins, and are from Africa. the black band on their chest is a sign that they are warm weather climate birds.

Also the pink patches of skin are a sign of the Warm weatherness. its how excess heat escapes. We also found out that since they don't like the cold, they leave the door open so they can come inside and get warm.

The stairs are gated off from the rest of the room, so the biologists can do their "care" duties without 20 penguins driving them crazy. Finally at one point the shoooed the penguins outside for the other group to do enrichment activities with, and we went out to sit and pose for pics with a penguin. Theres a really bad video an employee took, thinking they were taking a pic in another post below.

So then we went around front to see the other penguins, and do enrichment activities.

This is a flock of cold penguins, sitting at a door saying, can we go in now?

LOL so after that, andrew and I went in to get warm, and came back out at 11:00ish to watch the penguins be fed.

Thats when we got some nice pics of my penguin Jack. He's #119.

And no, I can't tell by looking which is Jack, only by the band. though Jack was one of the taller ones there.

Then we hung out at the aquarium, which is really nice, and headed home. We didn't get murdered, which is also nice.

Later!