Animal Overload

On Mom's birthday last Friday, she, her mom, and her sisters all took the afternoon off. Because the weather was awesome (breezy, partly sunny, and temps in the low 70's), they decided to celebrate by visiting an exotic animal park in the area.

I sure wish we got to go along! They got to admire some cool animals!

Alligators of various sizes:

Desert-dwelling tortoise:

In the darkened reptile room, Mom failed to take any photos of snakes. They just aren't her thing. There was a little corn snake that was kind of cute, but it was hiding in its house. ;^) She did take a few shots of lizards, though - they even seemed to be posing!

Somebody had just fed the emus some carrot sticks as Mom and her sister were approaching their enclosure (this is allowed, provided you buy them from the booth near their enclosure), and they continued hanging out by the fence just in case there were more carrots to be had. It's not every day a full-grown human can stand eye-to-eye with a bird! (And this is "just" an emu! The ostriches towered over Mom!)

Pygmy Goats:

The kids were sleeping - either chilling in the shade or sunbathing.

Some of the adults were hanging out by the fence in case there were treats. 

This goat was Mom's favorite.

This one seemed to think it was king or queen of the goats. It never left the platform.

A cute young antelope of some kind. There was no sign.

Such a show off!

Rainbow birds! Mom can't remember what species they are.

Prairie Dogs!

Wildebeest!

He or she was really sweet! It allowed our aunt to pet it, and she said its body and mane feel like a horse's. <3 

Giraffes. They're so tall it's ridiculous.

Lounging kangaroo

Some sort of Indian antelope. They look like they're wearing striped socks.

The three flamingos who didn't get the pink memo. New arrivals who haven't been eating the same food, perhaps?

A rather tubby wallaby:

Park visitors are allowed to enter a large enclosure with a bunch of parakeets inside, which Mom and her sisters eagerly did. The parakeets will happily land on your finger if you purchase a stick covered in birdseed for them to eat.

The parakeets came in a range of vibrant shades of green, yellow, and blue.

This one liked Mom's shoe!

Fortunately, nobody was pooped on or bitten while hanging out in here!

The last thing Mom and family did was take a bus ride to see some of the far-flung animal enclosures. Mom was frequently not on the right side of the bus for getting good views, but at least she got to see these resting watusi cattle up close!

This antelope of some kind (there are too many to keep them straight!) seemed quite happy to have its photo taken too.

The zebras were less photogenic. Not only were they on the wrong side of the bus for Mom to see them well, but upon the bus's approach, they all headed into the shelter. XD Mom says she doesn't blame them - there were approximately 20 loud children under the age of 5 on the bus. Mom managed to take this photo of the last one right before it disappeared from view.

Despite this rather anticlimactic ending to their visit, everybody had a great time. Never fear, there will be more equines in this post.

Back at home, Mom and her sister both opened their piles of presents. (Her sister's birthday is about a week before Mom's, and for various reasons, it made sense to celebrate together this year.) Here are Mom's:

- 3 new pajama shirts (isn't the one in the middle perfect? XD)

- 3 new plain t-shirts (to be worn while exercising)

- 2 TY critters that Mom asked for in honor of the 2 times she's won the family NCAA basketball pool: Rameses the ram (yay Tarheels!) and Mukluk the husky (yay Huskies!)

- penguin socks (who wouldn't want these?)

- dog-themed cross-stitch kit (Sorry Nala, no Pit Bulls)

- The Chemist (far-fetched, yes, but an enjoyable read)

- elephant pajama pants (to be worn with the animal selfie t-shirt, obviously)

Perhaps the best present of all was this little guy:

Mom's sister brought him back for Mom from her recent semester in Latin America.

He joins this mosaic horse, which her other sister brought her after her trip to Spain.

If these guys could talk, I bet it would be in Spanish! =)

As usual, HI2's happy birthday alert didn't come through until the day after Mom's birthday. *Sighs*

The only other HI2-related news I have is that Juliet and Julie recently caught an especially cute Datong:

...and he's a curmudgeon. Somehow that makes him even cuter in my mind. I was tempted to ask if we could retire him to our Millennium Fields, but then I remembered we recently retired Granite, that rose gray Shagya with the hodge-podge avatar. One cool deep rose gray is enough for now. :^)

They're Springing Up Like Dandelions!

Hi all! We've seen an abundance of HI2 horses worthy of mention this past week. They just keep coming... like the dandelions in lawns all across our neighborhood. Unlike dandelions, however, cool HI2 horses are always welcome. Here are a few for your viewing pleasure.

First up is this big red guy. Felicity and Orion fluted him on Ice Cube Isle. 

His stats are nothing spectacular, but his looks sure are! 

I love his artistic roaning and mismatched white feet. And then there's his persona.

=^) This may be my favorite personality label on the game. 

He seemed like a perfect Millennium Fields retiree to me, and I managed to convince my sisters of this too. I had the honor of naming him, selecting his rump art, and retiring him. Here he is:

He's standing amusingly close Granite, our retired rose gray Shagya Arabian. I wonder if he'll still be there next time we log on or if this was a fluke?

Next up is a Clydesdale! Lily mentioned in her last post how we have yet to find a nice one on the game. Well, we can't say that any longer, because Sard and I found one! The flute gave us a mahogany bay - a shocker, I know. ;^)

Unfortunately, her +5/6 stats only added up to +47, and her tyrannical personality did nothing to endear her to us either. So, no Clydesdale for our herd. Yet.

Xia and I stumbled upon cool equine #3 on our way to the far end of Line Isle, where we planned (and later did) use the flute. This one was a beautiful buckskin Curly!

Her +4/6 stats may not look that impressive at first glance, but they add up to +74. Not shabby at all! She's probably one of the highest-stat-ed +4/6ers we've ever been in possession of. All the same, she will not be staying either. We're content with our spotted Curly, Kiwi.

Equine #4 qualifies as cool because he was fluted today, on Mom's birthday! Yay for May 18 and a Friday birthday!

Felicity was playing at the time (riding Wonderland), but she switched to Napoleon, our lucky May 18 flute from a few years back, to use the flute. 

Despite the lucky pony and the proximity to a pot of gold (it contained $86k!), the fluted horse himself wasn't very impressive.

Oh well, our herd is definitely not suffering from a lack of Camargues!

Even though Mom isn't part of our birthday flute contest, just for fun, here is the horse on her birthday calendar page:

What a pretty horse! <3 Not a good match for the Camargue at all, though. XD

Our last cool equine is a small but mighty Dartmoor stallion. I spotted him in the auction house a couple of days ago when I was auctioning off some wild horses. He was one of several horses in a row going to the foreign bidder for around $5k. I fully expected him to be your typical low-stat, freshly-caught wild equine. But no!

As the 8 minutes remaining in the auction ticked by, I waited for somebody else to make this realization and bid. I mean, look at those stats! +6/6 and +92! Whoa!

With less than a minute left in the auction, still no bids from any players. You can probably guess what happened from there...

Sorry, Lily, but it would have been such a waste for him to leave the game! Look how cool his avatar is!

We'll see if he gets along okay with Xanadu, our Peruvian Paso mare who also has the "dictator" persona. 

If not, he may be going up for sale with the other equines we'll eventually be looking to send on their way. Maybe in honor of Mom's birthday, we'll finally get around to buying a horse store for our ranch...