Our trip to the Living Desert

Sheila said it's my turn to post, so I'm posting. Sheila's on Spring Break, so I took a mental Health Day and we went to the Living Desert. For those of you who have not heard of it, it is a zoo in Palm Desert, CA that specializes in desert species. It is a pretty cool place, but you have to be mindful of the heat. Right now it's still technically "moderate" meaning that it's 85 degrees in the shade.

Desert species amaze me. Deserts are one of the harshest environments, and these plants and animals are adapted to live there. Humans either leave or turn on the air conditioner. A Fennec Fox or a Desert Chemise plant can't do that, so they have adapted to this inhospitable biome. I really did not realize this until I took a Desert Ecology class at Cal State. Thanks for teaching me better, Dr. Fehn!

So, what did we see? All kinds of stuff. One of the animals that best represents the desert is the Roadrunner.

Deserts exist all over the planet, and the Living Desert has representatives from many deserts. The Striped Hyena is from Africa. A very impressive animal and the enclosure lets you get up close.


However, some of the best animals are not the big predators, but the smaller critters. There is a special enclosure that has butterflies and hummingbirds. We found a female Costa's Hummingbird sitting on her nest. She laid the egg about a week ago.


Feeding time came when we were looking at the small foxes. One took all of its "catches" and promptly buried them.

All in all, it was a great, if slightly warm, day!

At the bottom of this post, check out the bonus video that Sheila took in the butterfly enclosure!

Meet The Family

Here are our children:

1. Kurgan is the tubby one. She is so sweet and so tormented by the other cats. In the daytime, she barely fits in a basket that we got for Xmas, which she now owns and we can't put away. At night, she sleeps between our pillows and we keep her safe from the other cats. She is 14 years old.

2. Jameson is the smart one. I swear she was a human in a past life. She only wants to eat whatever we are eating, only wants fresh water from the tap, and has an amazing vocabulary. She was born in July 2000.

3. Hugh (real name is "Third of Five" from a Star Trek episode) is the old lady. We found her in a tree three days after we kept hearing meows. Poor baby. She acts like an old person and gets really mad if we don't leave the heating pad on low for her to sleep on all day. She is 13....going on 20.

4. Renfield is also 14 and is Kirgan's sister, but she is super skinny. She always has been. She is literally dumb as a post. Lately she has been throwing up a lot and we are worried about her. Ren can spot a fresh glass of ice water a mile away, and will be drinking it before you even sit down to drink it yourself.

(Picture of Renfield will be uploaded soon - when we get a good one (she is not that photogenic).

5. Nelson is about 4 years old. She was forced upon us (thanks a lot, Angela). She is mean as hell. We have come to realize that she has all of the symptoms of Asberger's Syndrome. Now that we know that, we get along a lot better with her...we know when she is receptive and when she is ready to kill us.