These Animals May Bite

First day of a week's holiday yesterday that I've taken off to spend some time with my lovely daughters. It's great having them around the house, but when I'm working our chats are limited to lunchtimes and snatched conversations around a teapot while it brews our latest cuppa, so I wanted to take advantage of my extra holiday and have a week where we could all relax together without the distraction of earning a crust.

Since this is a British summer the weather forecast for the week isn't brilliant, and when Nikki happened across a leaflet for the South Lakes Wild Animal Park we knew we'd have to go early in the week if we wanted to avoid being rained on.






The usual crop of giraffes, rhinos, lions, tigers, penguins etc were entertaining enough, but the real fun of the day came from listening to our fellow visitors. See the lemur shots up there? As you can see, most of them are ring-tailed lemurs, but casually draped in the grass on the left side is what may be a red ruffed lemur. One knowledgeable young man informed the rest of his family that this was "probably an orang-utan," while his grandma remarked that the huddled group of lemurs "looked like refugees."

Climbing up the steep slope past the flamingo pond I overheard one guy ask if his group wanted to come see "the flamencoes" and I almost tripped over a mother entreating her toddler to "stay on the path, or you'll be eaten by a wild animal." Poor kid will grow up never remembering why she has a life-long dread of zoos.

But the best comment of the day came from the mother taking a photograph of her son standing beside one of the rheas which were wandering loose on the path outside the main aviary.

"Smile Jeremy. No, smile like a person."