CHESTER ZOO
I started putting this post together on Friday, as a temporary laptop absence gave me some time to delve into the archives of my old MacBook. The photos were taken on a festive trip we took around this time last year to Chester Zoo, my absolute favourite in the UK. We had wondered round Islands, the relatively new area of the zoo dedicated to South East Asian Wildlife- and thought how brilliant it was that the exhibits gave you a real sense of place. We visited the Malayan tapirs and spent ages at the babirusa (google them), as I just couldn’t get enough of how weird their canines are (seriously, google them).
These juvenile Komodo dragons were the absolute highlight of our trip. At the time, they were around the size of large monitor lizards- still prequels of the massive, 3m long, venomous top predators they were about to become. I loved the juxtaposition between their current cuteness and the absolute tanks that they were going to develop into, and spent a good 20 minutes looking at those huge claws and their bright eyes. Then my boyfriend call me over to see the new Philippine mouse deer that had just been born, and it was the cherry on top of what had been a perfect day.
Then, of course, I opened my laptop on Saturday to the terrible news of the fire in the Monsoon Forests building. At the minute its looks like all the mammals are safe, but that the zoo lost, among other animals, its cinnamon frogs, tentacled snakes and grosbeak starlings. It’s such a sad loss- however, with donations flooding in (last time I checked the Just Giving page had reached £133,000) some good at least may come from the catastrophe. The zoo have said that they’ll spend it on conservation work- something which they already do a lot of good stuff on. They even work with Komodo dragons, in fact, out in Indonesia where they are trying to better map their distribution and manage their impacts in communities outside of protected areas. I wish them the very best- and can’t wait to get back up North soon to check on the dragons’ progress.
