( continues...) Three of them, including a juvenile! Did I mention, Faunapalooza? FAUNAPALOOZA!!! The juvenile was a bit nervous. It wanted to check me out, from a distance, make sure I was no threat. The other two seemed entirely unfazed.
Many many highlights. They had cassowaries. Quite a few. I got ridiculously close (there was a fence, but both of us were taller than it). AS was getting nervous at this point, as I'd explained their potentially lethal properties. They had koalas, and one was active - feeding, climbing, and sitting on another koala's head. We had bags of feed, and fed wallabies. We fed a mother with a joey. We fed the joey.
Then we saw the barking owl.
I'm sorry. What did you say?
The barking owl.
That's what I thought you said.
There was an owl. It barked at me.
Is that supposed to help?
It's also called the screaming woman owl.
...I was happier when it was barking.
Most people are. I know I was.
The barking owl really does sound like it's barking. And it's gorgeous, and was standing a few feet from us and happy to stay there. It looked like something was wrong with one eye, it may have had a cataract. It was the highlight of the trip for AS.
Wedge-tailed eagles! From a distance I could only see one, but the other one was on the ground. Flat out on the ground, with wings spread, soaking up the sun. These are impressive eagles, about the size of a golden eagle. See, not only was I seeing lots of Australian animals, there was all sorts of cool behaviour going with it. Like, the bronzewing pigeons actually pulled the broken wing thing. (If something gets too close to the nest, they pretend to have a broken wing and lead them away on the pretext that they're an easy meal.)
Last thing to note, the emu mugging. These are some of the dumbest birds on the planet, fairy penguins included, but they're also pretty big. Not as aggressive as cassowaries, but they have been known to get spooked. They're taller than I am, and if they know you have food, they want their cut. So I enter the emu and red kangaroo enclosure (red kangaroos! FAUNAPALOOZA!!), and these emus start sidling up to us, making their gulping call and with eyes fixed firmly on the bags of food. Now AS is shrieking and hiding behind me (and almost pulling me over), while I try to teach the second-largest bird on the planet some manners. I loved it. Right up there, eye to eye. The solution, by the way, is simply to tip some food onto the ground. They go for that, you wander off, and by the time they're done they've completely forgotten where it came from in the first place. Like I said, not smart.
There were other critters (satin bowerbird! Sulphur-crested cockatoos! Parrots of many varieties and hues!) but these are good highlights. Oh, and Makybe Diva won the Melbourne Cup for the third year running. As if that can compete with FAUNAPALOOZA!
FAUNAPALOOZA!!!!