Wild at Woburn

Warning: Today's post is rated PG-13 for animal nudity.  Yes, you read that correctly. All you under-13s, GET OUT NOW!

Right then.

Now that we've gotten that taken care of, a bit of context: Woburn Abbey is not a church, it's an estate.  A really really big one--3000 acres of property.  The house itself is pretty amazing, what with the Chinese porcelain, the intricate murals, and the cake knives which commemorate family beheadings for treason.  Incidentally, I live on a street named after the owner's family.

Go figure.  But more interesting than the house itself is the grounds--while out exploring and failing to located the aviary, we stumbled across (err, invented our own path around the fence which blocked off) this cool cave.  From left: Dave, Karen, Laura, me, Chad...half of our Italy group!  Missing are Michael and Nate, present is Chad who is alas not joining us.

I know you were waiting for this strange component of animal nudity.  I feel guilty putting this on the internet for fear of certain types of people, but the moment was to epic to not share. The rest of the land (not covered by houses, caves, or aviaries) is composed of a giant wildlife safari, part walk-through and part drive-through.  Imagine a coachful of college students gazing at a group of giraffes when suddenly two giraffes are basically becoming one...for your viewing pleasure is the moment before, which was intended as a completely innocent giraffe shot, for the record!  (All you morbidly curious people who still don't know what I'm talking about, click on the photo and scroll down and right).  Gah.

Look, Mom, I can fly!  We did a paddleboating thing around a pond in a swan-shaped boat.  This duck decided to show off his wingspan as we powered past.

The lemur that very nearly mauled me. The lemur exhibit, believe it or not, was on the walk-through portion, and you could enter the area and get up close and personal with the lemurs.  Most of them kept their distance, choosing to spit on the unfortunate spectators from high in the trees, but this guy came careening down the walkway railing...luckily I managed to snap a shot of him before jumping back!

Adorable penguins.  For real.  I spent a good 15 minutes just watching them play. They're actually really good at the backstroke...several were floating around with bellies to the sky.

Rhinos!  They're not from Rochester and they don't play soccer (erm..football), but I was fond of them just the same.  This is from the bus, so sorry for the distance...but you can't really blame their legal department!

I really really wanted to take this timberwolf home with me...they look just like huskies, only more stately and graceful.  This guy was living quite contentedly in the same region as several other wolves and a family of black bears.

They had a show of exotic birds.  This parrot knew several tricks...I was torn about the morals of training wild birds to perform for birdseed, but I had to admit, when she waved goodbye, it was pretty darn adorable.

With that, I'm off!  Next week's post should be G again. =p