Keeper For The Day - Part 3 (FD)

If you missed them, you can read part 1 here, and read part 2 here.

After lunch, we stopped to say, "Hi," to this very wooly sheep:

I forget what Julie said the sheep's breed was. It certainly was rather wooly though, as you can no doubt tell from the above photo.

Then we fed Peppa Pig, who lived in the pen next to the sheep. Here's a photo of Peppa Pig standing in the mud:

Then we stopped to say, "Hi," to some Dwarf Mongoose...

...On our way to go cuddle some animals.

First I cuddled Maize the Corn Snake:

They also had a female Corn Snake named Sweetcorn, who Maize was trying desperately to go pay a visit to. Not that she cared, since she was curled up in her little rock house thing, sleeping soundly, and ignoring Maize's attempts at getting her attention.

After Maize went back in his cage, I cuddled Prince the Royal Python:

While I was holding him, Prince gave me a kiss, so I said, "I can say I've been kissed by a prince now." But Kelly said snake princes don't count. Personally, I think that's unfair, since frog princes count, and if frog princes count, shouldn't snake princes count too?

Anyway, next I cuddled Roland the Rat Snake:

Or, I should say, "tried" to cuddle Roland the Rat Snake, since Roland was living up to his nickname of "Wriggling Roland" by wriggling so much I could hardly hold on to him.


Once all the snakes were safely back in their cages, we washed our hands before heading for the next room of things I could cuddle, since they wouldn't have appreciated our hands smelling of snake. Well, we'd washed our hands a few times throughout the day, but we did it this time even though our hands weren't officially dirty, for the sake of the animals.

Animals like Gary the Fat-Tailed Gerbil, who I'm holding in this photo:

Our boys were Mongolian Gerbils, and much more difficult to handle than Gary (and his brother, Gerry, who didn't get a photo taken of him). They did have Mongolian Gerbils too, but I didn't hold one of them. Apparently Fat-Tailed Gerbils are always easier to handle, since they're a LOT less active. I'll have to bear that in mind for if we ever decide to get gerbils again.

Anyway, after Gary and Gerry were back in their cage, I cuddled something you may think would be unpleasant to cuddle. He really wasn't though. His name was Sonic, and he was a Hedgehog. Here he is:

Cuddling a hedgehog is surprisingly nice. Also, Sonic is only just learning to like being handled, and usually when anyone but the keeper training him tries to hold him, he either will only tolerate resting on their hands for a moment, or curls up in a ball. As you can see from the above photos, that wasn't the case with me. Sonic even forgot to make the huffing noise they make when they don't like something at one point (he usually makes it the whole time he's being held). Julie actually said he could do with someone like me to gently show him that being held and petted isn't scary. As you can imagine, it made me feel good to have such a compliment.

Harry Potter fans will love this one... Because of the noise they make being a huffing noise - which is actually called a "Huffle," or something like that - they named their other hedgehog Hufflepuff.

So... When Sonic was back in his cage, I had a cuddle of Edward the Long-Tailed Chinchilla:

My girls, Mollie and Maizie, are Short-Tailed Chinchillas, so I got to see the difference. Also, Edward being a few years older than my girls, he was that bit calmer, and easier to hold for more than a few seconds. I'm hoping I can have cuddles that long with Mollie and Maizie one day.

Next for a cuddle was Bert the Bearded Dragon:

Followed by Greta the Armadillo:

Now there's something I never thought I'd be cuddling. It was like cuddling a turtle with a slatted - and slightly bristly - shell. Interesting experience.

Speaking of things I never thought I'd get to actually cuddle... Here are a couple of photos of me cuddling Oleg the Meerkat:

Who took a nap in my arms...

Oleg has been hand reared from birth, hence him being so tame. He loves cuddles, and started jumping up and down in his cage squealing to be picked up the moment we entered the room. He was quite upset when he had to go back in his cage. Well, he was until he heard someone bringing his food, at which point I was no longer interesting to him. Still, I enjoyed my cuddle time while it lasted. The whole day was amazing, but I think cuddling Oleg the Meerkat was one of my favourite parts of the day. In fact, I'd say it was my very favourite part. I mean, having the meerkats jumping and climbing over me was awesome, but actually getting to have a proper cuddle with one was so far beyond awesome I'm not even sure what word would fit the experience!

Favourite part or not, the day wasn't over at this point though. But I'll tell you about the rest next time.

Keeper For The Day - Part 2 (FD)

If you missed it, you can read part 1 here.

After the Meerkats it was time to feed some Penguins.

Some children who were at the park came up to see the Penguins while we were in feeding them, so Julie left me throwing fish for the Penguins while she did the talk for them. Here's a video of me feeding the penguins while Julie does the first part of her penguin talk:

Kelly also took some photos of the Penguins...

...Including a couple of Slasher the 25 year old Rock Hopper Penguin...

It was fun, but I have to admit I was glad to have gloves between me and the fish I was throwing for them. Also, throwing fish to penguins is hard on the back and shoulders... Just saying.

Anyhow, they never did decide they'd had enough fish. But when Julie decided they'd had enough, we headed off to see some other animals.

We said, "Hello," in passing to some of them, including these Sacred Ibis:

This Eagret:

These Lop-Eared Rabbits:

And this Flamingo:

Then we went to have our "meet and greet" with the Beavers and Capybaras, and to feed them. Well, mostly to feed them, since they decided it was too wet to come out and do the "meet and greet" part.

This Beaver did brave the rain long enough to check out what was on offer for breakfast:

But the Capybaras were not coming out of the sheltered spot they'd found, even for food. Julie tried everything, but they weren't having it. She did offer to try and take me across to them, but since she almost slipped herself trying to get over there, we just thanked her for trying and said it was OK. We did leave them their food though, and Kelly grabbed a couple of photos:

Even the Beavers thought being in their den was better in such wet weather:

So, we left them to sleep in the dry, and headed off for our next animal encounter.

Next was feeding time for the bats. I forget what kind of bat Julie said they were, but here's a photo of some of them:

This Common Marmoset was in with the bats, so we fed him too:

Here's another of the bats:

Also in the same enclosure was this Sloth. Julie did tell me his name, but I don't remember what it was. Anyway, here he is:

None of them came quite close enough for me to touch, but a bat flew so close to me as it passed that I felt the draught from its wings, and being able to say I fed them is cool, anyhow.

After that it was time for our lunch, so we headed to the cafe where I had pizza and chips (fries) and Kelly had lasagne. Let me tell you I was glad for the chance to sit down by this point! I'll tell you next time what I did after lunch.

#Furkid Friday: Is It #Christmas Again? (FD)

Um... Hi everyone. This is Mollie the chinchilla.

Something strange but wonderful happened about a week ago. It was like that Christmas thing was back again.

The Mummy human has a Mummy human of her very own. I didn't know about this, but I suppose all humans do? Anyway, my chinchilla sister, Maizie, and I, have never met her, but our degu brother, Joshua, says he's seen her a few times. So, this Nanny Human, as Joshua calls her, supposedly got some of our stuff from Santa Paws by mistake at Christmas. But it took her ages to get a chance to send them to us. Now she finally has, and the Mummy Human gave them to us about a week ago.

There was this fun hanging toy for me and Maizie...

There was also a box of hay biscuit things, which all three of us have to share. We don't mind though, since their big enough that Maizie and I can easily share one, and there are a few in the box. Not for long if we have our way though, since they're very tasty, and we aren't very good at making nibbles we enjoy last a long time.

Anyway, here's a photo of me and Maizie in our house sharing our first one:

And here's Joshua in his house with his first one:

Like I said, it was like that Christmas thing had come again... It was great!

Squeak soon,
Mollie

#Writing Wednesday - April 5th 2017

I'd hoped to be able to give you a release date for at least my poetry collection by this week, especially with April being National Poetry Month (NaPoMo) or National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) if you prefer. Unfortunately, that's not happening. I've got enough poems written that I could put a new collection together, but I haven't even decided which cover artist will be doing the cover for it, let alone discussed possible cover designs with the cover artist in question.

As for the story I'm writing... Well... I'm still working on it, but I have to admit to having made very little progress recently. With everything I've had going on, most of my writing time in the past couple of months has been a few minutes snatched here and there, so my progress on the story I'm writing is a lot slower than I'd hoped it would be, and much slower than is normal for me with writing projects. There is some progress though. I mean, I have a rough idea of where it's heading, and an even rougher idea of how it will get there, which is great for someone like me who never does outlines. It's just going to take me longer than I'd hoped to get it written. Then I'll need to sort out a cover for it, as well as doing all those other things required to get a book ready for publication... It's going to take quite a while yet, basically.

This year is going to be a very slow one for new releases, apparently!

Good thing I have plenty of other books for people to read in the meantime...

***

Are you a writer too? If so, is it short stories you write? If you answered yes to both of those, you may like to check out these tips for ending a short story.

Regardless of what you write, however, remember to reread, reread, and reread again.

Also, here are some considerations for if you want to be a professional writer. NOTE: that last post contains a small amount of strong language.

Last, but certainly not least, remember writers, it's Okay to log out.

Keeper For The Day - Part 1 (LBE And FD)

As you'll know if you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, my trip to Drusillas Park on March 22nd 2017 was awesome! Not only was the "keeper for the day" experience itself amazing, but the keeper we had was wonderful (both in general, and with me as a blind person). I'm very grateful to have such a fantastic friend who arranged this for me, and also very grateful to the people - and animals - at Drusillas Park for making my day so awesome. So... Thank you, Karl, Julie, and the rest of the gang at Drusillas... People and animals alike!

Anyway, we took loads of photos, as well as a couple of short videos, and the post would get WAY too long if I put them all in one post. So I'm seporating it in to several posts, which will be published over the next couple of weeks on Sundays and Mondays. There are four posts in all, of which this is the first.

It was pouring with rain that day, but it didn't dampen my enjoyment one bit. Hey, I'm from Wales, and used to just getting on with things despite the rain. My only concern with the rain was how our camera would manage taking the photos with how much it was raining. I'm told it did a good job of compensating for all the rain though, so that's a relief. OK, time to get on with telling you about the day.

We caught an early train, making sure to allow for delays, to be sure we weren't late. Naturally, since we'd allowed for delays, there weren't any. So we were there over an hour early, and they sat us in the cafe with a cup of coffee for Kelly, and a cup of tea for me, to wait until it was time for my keeper to come meet up with us.

Kelly passed the time checking out the stuff he could see from where we were sat in the cafe. Like this real estate sign:

These pictures of wolves:

And this dynamite:

(I'm not sure what it was made of... Kelly wouldn't go over and prod it for me to find out, and wouldn't take me over either).

Then our keeper, Julie, came to fetch us, and took us back to the staff room to give us the pre-keeper experience talk, and on the way there we couldn't resist stopping to say, "Hi," to these Goeldi Monkeys:

When we finally made it to the staff room, Julie gave me my very own name badge and shirt with the zoo's logo on. Here's me with Julie, all ready to start the day:

After that we headed to the store rooms to check out the dry food some of the animals eat, before heading to the kitchens to prepare some fresh vegetables for some of the animals. We didn't take photos of me sorting the vegetables. Part of this is because even Kelly got involved with this to speed things along, and part of it is that we didn't feel it was anything worth taking photos of. If anyone feels they missed out by not seeing a photo or two of me chopping vegetables, I can always get Kelly to take one of me in our own kitchen... It won't be all that different, to be honest. It was cool knowing I'd be feeding the animals food I lovingly prepared myself though.

With the food prepared and in a bucket, we headed off to see some animals.

First we stopped to say, "Hi," to their donkeys. I don't remember the name for the kind of donkey they were, but they're the small ones that are around the same kind of size as Shetland Ponies (as you'll see from the photos in a moment).

There were two donkeys, Cocoa and Drucilla. I bent down to pet Cocoa, and Drucilla the donkey tried to hug me, since she felt she wasn't getting enough attention. I have to say, having a donkey try to hug me is an entirely new experience. I've petted donkeys before, even ridden on some of the bigger ones when they still did donkey rides on the beaches, but never have I had a donkey walk up to me while I was petting another and attempt to hug me by putting her head across my shoulder. Naturally, I hugged her back, because who wouldn't? Here's a photo of me bent down hugging Drucilla the donkey:

When I got up to leave their house, Drucilla tried to beat me to the door to stop me leaving...

But there were other things to see and do, so I had to leave the cuddly donkey behind.

After the donkeys I cleaned out the Meerkat nesting box. I figured you wouldn't want photos of me scooping dirty sawdust and stuff from a wooden box, so we didn't get any photos of that. However, when we went in to feed and have our "meet and greet" with the meerkats, we hat to get some photos.

I can't remember the names of all the Meerkats, though Julie did tell me what they were, and I certainly can't remember which identifying mark belonged to which, so I can't name them as I share their photos. Here they are anyway...

Here's a Meerkat on a rock in their enclosure:

Here's a Meerkat on a stump in their enclosure:

Here's a gang of Meerkats:

And here's one of the Meerkats exiting their burrow:

Because it was such a wet day, Julie put a black bag down on a large rock in their enclosure for me to sit on. Naturally, one of the Meerkats immediately tried to steal it...

...And, no. Me sitting on it did not stop the attempts to steal the bag. Haha!

Once I was sitting on the rock, the Meerkats immediately came to check me out. I'd been a bit worried about them potentially being afraid of my white cane (which was no longer white by the end of the day, as I'm sure you can imagine). But apparently it was a fun toy to investigate, swing off, and jump on and off of. Anyway, here are some photos of the Meerkats checking me out and climbing on me:

Also, here's a short video of me being climbed over by the gang of Meerkats:

I got to feed them, and petted them a little while they were jumping on and off of me. It was great fun! I could have sat there all day, but there was more to see and do, of course.

You'll have to find out next time what we did after the Meerkats though.