Zoo glass is well-designed for it’s primary purpose. It can keep big dangerous animals on one side and still allow big humans to gawk at them from the other side. It’ll scratch, but it’s not terrible. There’s a slight greenish cast to it, but most people don’t notice and photographers can easily correct for it (if they have full colour vision … those lucky bastards).

One problem with it, though, is that it’ll etch over time and get a bit cloudy. Also, since it’s rather thick, it’s harder to shoot at an angle without it really changing things on the sides of the image.

Sometimes, however, that works out OK.

Surprisingly, with all the zoos I’ve visited, this is the first African Wildcat I’ve seen. This is an interesting side effect of zoos working to save critically endangered species. The wildcat is rated “Least Concern”, so no one is working to actively breed it. I don’t know if this specific animal as a rescue, but if you want to see exotic non-rare species, rescue centers or zoos that work with law enforcement (working against the illegal pet trade) is the way to do it.

When you travel to different zoos, you really start to see many of the same species … those that are endangered but that can also probably be bred. The critically endangered animals that *might* be able to be bred are usually in breeding centers away from the public. Sadly, the critically endangered animals that cannot be bred, for whatever reason, are largely left to their own devices within a rapidly shrinking and worsening habitat.

So many of the animals I see are endangered, some are critically endangered, but the most critically endangered animals on the planet are ones that I will likely never be able to see. Still, I’m glad to see what I have been able to see.

With a very expensive tilt lens, I could have gotten the squirrel in perfect focus without having that distracting line of focus going down the slope. (Cost: $2,000)

Another approach would be to use a LensBaby Lens Composer, which isn’t as good as a tilt lens, but a lot cheaper (Cost: $300)

Alternatively, I could achieve a similar effect with a tilt/shift adapter or a bellows unit for an existing lens. (Cost: $100 – 200)

Yet another way to do it would be to use Photoshop and just blur that area out. (Cost: $30/mo)

However, there are free and “cloud” options like Photoshop Express, GIMP, and Pixlr. (Cost: $0 + the time to learn something new)

The option I chose, of course, is do nothing and spend the time I could have spent correcting the issue researching the costs of how to fix the problem, ’cause I’m all meta and stuff.

Sometimes you’re so busy with work, there’s no option but to get some take out.

The red river hog is actually a red hog that likes rivers in Africa. It does not actually live on the Red River. Not that there’s one Red River. There are actually two, one up North near me and one way down South. Judging from Google Earth, neither of these rivers is actually red. Just in case the colours changed due to the pollution reduction efforts of the EPA, I checked the oldest photos I could, but apparently back then the rivers were sorta black and grey.

Anyway, here’s a completely unrelated pig.

Baby monkeys are made of velcro.

It took me years but I finally got to see a giant river otter.

They look almost exactly like North American river otters, but 2-3 times as big.

Of course, the zoo wouldn’t let me toss a child into the enclosure to give you a sense of scale.

Meanies.