New zoo review

Forget koala bears. I want a wombat. They are possibly the cutest animal ever. Yesterday, Sarah and I went to Birdland Animal Park. It's a little zoo that only has native animals and it's about 10 minutes from Sarah's house. There's something sort of funny about the fact that we went on a day when her kids were in preschool. Forget them, we wanted to spend our own quality time petting animals. It also was the first day with milder temperatures, which usually means better animal viewing.

That's the funny thing about Birdland -- you actually can pet most of the animals and feed them. They have signs telling you that some of the animals will bite, but they sort of leave it up to you to not be a dumb ass. Stick your finger in Rocky the King Parrot's cage, and he might take it off. There are zoo keepers around, but they aren't monitoring your every move. That's one of the things that's refreshing about Australia: The country as a whole seems to place a little more responsibility on individuals to take care of themselves.

But back to Birdland. They have a big exhibit with kangaroos where you can go in with them. Very cool. Though if a kangaroo gets mad at you, it can grab you with its front paws and then kick you really hard with its hind legs, basically tearing out your insides. We stayed away from the grumbly one. A lot of the animals at the zoo have been rescued or found as babies. Apparently if you find a baby wombat or kangaroo, you're supposed to turn it into a rescue group, but no one really cares if you keep it either. A friend of Sarah's found a wombat and she's pretty sure it's one of the ones at Birdland now.

There are lots of birds at Birdland, but it's hard to get good bird photos. OK, it's hard for ME to get good bird photos. I'm still amazed at the really cool birds here. Parrots fly up to the bird feeder at home and I see cockatoos and galahs just flying around in the trees when I'm walking. Kookaberras make amazing jungle noises. I thought there were monkeys in the bush my first night here, but it was just the kookaberras.