Ram Tough and other Scenes

Posted on January 25, 2004 in Zoos

A desert bighorn ram stood tall when we approached his area at the end of the San Diego Wild Animal Park’s Condor Ridge. I watched him for several minutes as he gnawed at a prickly pear cactus ear. I wanted to know how he did it. Even though he was only fifteen feet away, I couldn’t figure it out. The green inner meat attracted his hunger. He bashed at it with his hooves and then brought his teeth and his upper lip close to the wet flesh. Was he bashing down the thorns so that they wouldn’t stick him when he ate the pad or did he soften the skin so he could strip it off with his teeth and tongue?

For several minutes he worked at it as a ewe watched. Then he took two bounds up the rock and did something that I did not photograph nor will describe.

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Lynn fed the lorikeets. She took pity on one bird. This fellow flew up for his bit of nectar out of the cup. Whenever he reached for it, other birds muscled him off. The first pair of bullies sated themselves and flew off. He approached the cup. Two more birds jumped from the iron bar and shoved past him. He walked up Lynn’s arm and nibbled at the nipple of her Camelback, desparate for any liquid.

We never could figure out how to let him get his share.

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We went down to the Heart of Africa to view the wart hogs who had been piglets last summer. Most of the group shared a family bed beneath a fallen tree. All enjoyed comfort. They looked like repetitions in an Escher pattern that had no reversal.

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Pictures are coming.