Przewalski's Horse

On the scale of things that really annoy me, this horse is right up at the top of the list. Not because of the horse itself, I love the horses, but because I have never heard anyone pronounce its name correctly. I even had a course last semester at Cornell with "highly respected" professor who couldn't even manage to do it. So here's the correct way for all of you. The Przewalski's (Shuh-vall-skee...I know that's not even close to the correct phonetic spelling, but you get the idea) Horse, or takhi, is the only remaining truly wild horse on earth. Mustangs, brumbies and such are actually just feral horses, not wild. This horse is one of the many reasons I'd like to visit Mongolia before I die.

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's the big 21 folks.

A little break from the cats

I thought it was about time to give anyone who actually checks this blog a bit of a rest on the big cat pics. There are more, but its easy to overdo it. So here's a nice change of pace from my trip to the Minnesota Zoo. This odd looking ungulate is the Sichuan takin, a close (and very rare) relative of the musk ox and the mountain goat.

Shazam

Shazam is another of the more spectacular cats at the sanctuary, he is a black leopard (not to be confused with the black jaguar I posted earlier). He was a very high stress cat when he came to the sanctuary, but Trista (the head keeper) has put in a lot of work with him since he showed up. It has definitely payed off; he's still a pretty high stress cat, but the bond he and Trista have is pretty impressive. He was very tough to shoot, black things can be difficult to focus on.

Close Up

Titan again, but this time I tried to capture some of his personality, and the emotions surrounding his previous life and rescue, by focusing just on the eye region. This turned out as one of two photos that I think really capture the essence of the sanctuary, you can almost sense some of the abuse and sadness in his past, but you also recognize that those problems really are in the past for him. Like he's finally found some peace.