Exuberant Bastard: April 2007

Lions, Tigers and Panda-Bears? Oh My? Strange bears indeed, but still classified in Ursidae. Above is Mei-Lan ("Atlanta Beauty") the newest panda in the Great Sino-American Defy Evolution save the useless animal campaign. I love pandas. They're cute. But in my uninformed ecological opinion, they do nothing for the environment. Read about them. The only food they digest, is so lacking in nutrients they have to eat pound after pound of the young shoots to survive. They compensate by sleeping...a lot. They're SOOO lazy, apparently mating is a chore! Mei-Lan and at least one other American born Chinese Giant Panda are test tube babies! Yang-Yang, the Atlanta male Giant Panda... talk about a misnomer. At least Lun-Lun, the mother is a good mother figure. Cute buggers though, well worth the trip to see this dying species. A word of advice, register online and pay the 5 bucks for your ten minute tour. Pray that their both awake and playful like at our session. The Atlanta Zoo isn't going to help you take pictures of them though. Definitely turn off your flash, and if you can get your lens up to the glass, the more the better. They're behind some 1 inch glass so the reflections are horrible at the wrong angles.

Scratch off Tigers too, because somebody hid that guy way out of my poor 28-105mm f3.5-4.6 lens' range. I got a Lion though! He looks quite kingly, but I mean that in an 80's style king. Check out that hairdo.

This male lion had just woken from a nap to eat some tiny chunks of meat that were rained on his head. Not exactly befitting a giant hunter cat, but hey, that's the good life right? I only wish they could somehow encourage them to Roar on cue. I've never heard a lion roar in person. By far my most N.Dynamite moment of the day was when somebody somehow got the Zoo Tiger guide to talk about Ligers. I was very sad to find out they were not bred for magical powers, but are the result of breeding accidents much like most stray mutts and cats.

The orangutans were great, and I like how they ate oranges. I figure things that start in O-R-A-N should eat things that start with O-R-A-N. I've yet to find a food that starts with K-E-L-V. I'm sure I could fudge with it and eat Kelp... This cute guy and his mom had a great crowd admiring them. The mom even threw back the spent orange peels as she finished them. Since there are no chimpanzees at the Atlanta Zoo, she has the great distinction of being the only primate there that the Atlanta Braves can sign. She and her son are more maroon than ... well ... orange that we're familiar with in the movies because one species is slightly more critically endangered than the other. Quick etymology: in Malay, 'orang' means "person" and 'hutang' means "forest", thus Orangutan = "man of the forest".

Follow the link below to see the only pictures I let pass through my editing sieve. The worst and most expensive part of this excursion was that I realized just what I was lacking in the zoom department. I have this bad-boy coming down the pipes... which is both great, and at great cost. Thankfully it's more than a necessity in my upcoming wedding shoots this year, because of the limited access I have to some altar areas.