Another last-minute decision Stephanie and I made was to visit the Santa Barbara Zoo @ Santa Barbara. We had an hour (yes, an hour) to check out all the animals in the zoo, and surprisingly, we did it! And I managed to take some pretty decent pictures too
We saw the pretty flamingos..
… the cute giraffes..
… some absolutely adorable Humboldt penguins (video @ Flickr)..
… a grumpy gorilla who refused to smile to us..
… an anxious giant ant-eater who wouldn’t stop pacing in and out (video @ Flickr)..
… a pair of very loving African lions (video @ Flickr)..
… and a pair of very cute Asian small-clawed otters.
And of course, I’ve got some pictures of myself too
More pictures taken at the Santa Barbara Zoo here.
This post pretty much wraps up my 12-day stay in California and needless to say, I enjoyed myself very much, and I am very much indebted to my super-friendly and accommodating host, Stephanie, the founder of Chelonian Science Foundation. Stephanie has shown me, among other things, that “everything is possible if you put your heart in it.” She has been a role model to me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from her.
Thank you very much, Stephanie
P/S: More pictures taken during visits to other zoos:
I couldn’t believe Stephanie when she said that we were going to the Mojave (pronounced Moh-Ha-Vee) Desert. I mean, I have read about the desert tortoises and about Mojave Desert but I didn’t know that we were actually near enough to even have time to go visit it!
Anyway, we drove about an hour and a half to get to the Randsburg-Mojave Road which you MUST turn into if you wanted to see the desert tortoises. We did not make the turn at the junction and we landed ourselves in the middle of a desert on a dirt road in a BMW sports car! We had to go as slowly as 5 miles per hour because the roads weren’t paved and we didn’t want a flat tire when we were in the desert
We were given directions to get to the camp ground and we finally made it there, and we were only 30 minutes late!
There was a Desert Tortoise Kiosk at the Desert Tortoise Natural Area (DTNA) and in the kiosk, there were lots of information sheets and brochures about programs that were currently being carried out as well as souvenirs and paintings for sale. There was also a Field Researcher (I feel so bad for forgetting her name) who would be there until sometime in June and she would be there to man the kiosk and to answer any questions that visitors might have.
Now, see this burrow?
That is a home for a desert tortoise! We can roughly tell the size of the tortoise by looking at the size of the burrow. A burrow can be up to 12m in length and 3m in depth. Most tortoises stay in their burrows when we were there because it wasn’t exactly warm enough yet. In fact, it was still cold and wind speed was estimated at between 25 to 35 miles per hour.
But we were very lucky We managed to see 5 desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) on that particular day, and one of them was spotted on the dirt road (not in the burrow)!
Desert tortoises are thought to live 40 - 60 years. They grow relatively slowly and adult females are larger than adult males (for obvious reasons). They typically breed from April to June and the female tortoises lay between 1 and 11 eggs. Incubation period for eggs varies from 80 to more than 100 days.
Also, check out the video that shows the 360-degree view of the desert (don’t view it if you get dizzy easily):
More pictures of the visit to the Mojave Desert here.
As with visiting the Strawberry Festival @ Oxnard, the trip to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History was also quite a last-minute decision. In fact, when we arrived at the museum, we had only an hour to check out the exhibits. Stephanie was particularly interested in the “special exhibition of the dinosaurs” and I had never been to the Santa Barbara Museum, so we thought, why not?
So the first thing that we did was to get to the exhibition room where all the dinosaurs were exhibited. We spent quite some time looking at the exhibits and reading about how the paleontologists worked to get the remains of the dinosaurs.
And this exhibition room…
… reminded me of “A Night At the Museum”. It was sooo surreal, I was feeling as thought I was in the movie, and something behind the glass would come to life and all..
And there was also a whale restoration project going on. The skeleton of the Blue Whale has been on display since 1983 and the exposure to the sun, rain and human contact has contributed to the natural process of decay. The restoration project was initiated to keep the popular display available to the public in the future.
More pictures of the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum here.
