NW Trekin'

[elfs]

Our last day was spent at yet another zoo, this time Northwest Trek, an open air "nature preserve" on a couple hundred acres of land, with diesel-powered trams rolling through the terrain and letting us get a good look at various life forms once indigenous to the area but now consigned to living either in these cages or the inhospitable margins of territory where humans don't want to live in great density.

This cougar had no muscle tone at all; her belly hung down about her waist like a great jellysack. Trek isn't nearly as successful as Woodland Park Zoo at keeping its cages up; they were small and, frankly, cruel to the nocturnal animals; while the cages themselves were enclosed for protection, it was unnatural protection; there was no place where the barn owls, for example, could hide from the prying eyes of visitors even in the daytime.

The animals themselves were beautiful, as we expect them to be: the foxes, the wolves, river otters (favorite creature of some segments of Furrydom, as it's the mammal with the largest penis relative to its bodyweight), grizzly and black bears, skunks, moose, owls, bison.

The kids had a good time, although by the end of the day both Yamaraash-chan and Kouryou-chan were flagging and ready to be done. I think we all were. Vacation was over, and we were ready to go home and be done.

Omaha and I had one more thing: for the next day, we had tickets to go see Rush.

Many more pictures can be seen at the NW Trek picture set on Flickr.