Kanazawa Zoo

This week-end was the (15th?) anniversary of the Kanazawa zoo, and so they were open for free for the 3 days. Today was a very sunny but not too warm day. The zoo opens at 9:30 and it was packed full right from the start, with the zoo mascots there to welcome everyone.

The zoo is part of a big park complex with several botanical gardens on different themes and the zoo. The zoo was very nice, with fake-rock walls and moats to seperate the cages instead of bars, and flowers and trees all over.

The animals all seemed happy, except the african mule-type thing that looked in a filthy mood, but that's pretty normal for any mule. There were several babies but none of them new-born, although a baby rhino is probably pretty big to start with.

As there has been some quite warm weather lately most of the animals were shedding like mad. But for once the moose didn't look the worst! And all the animals were really active. I guess it was the combination of sun and cool weather. And of course for a given value of 'really active'. By that I mean most of the animals were running around all over the place, the wombat was scratching itself and moving about, and one of the koalas had it's eyes open. You can't expect supernatural behaviour either....

And as well as being a very nice zoo, it has something I have never seen anywhere else before. You have all seen aviaries. Well this zoo has a ....

Stag-beetle-ary!

It's just like an aviary: you walk through the mesh doors, noting the little sign saying don't squish the beetles, and inside there are open boxes full of dirt. And in the dirt and humongous white grubs, which will, eventually, hatch into stag beetles. And yes, that stage beetles will be free inside the tent just like birds in aviaries. Cool, eh? They even have special boxes of dirt set out special so that you can dig in them yourself to try and find yourself a grub. You don't get to keep them, however. Must be great fun in summer time in there.