San Diego Zoo

On the third Friday of each month, the San Diego Zoo opens its orchid greenhouse to the public.  It's a very crowded greenhouse, certainly not an exhibition showplace, but it does have a strange and wonderful purpose in life.

The Zoo's orchid house receives the orchids confiscated by border guards under the Cites regulations, the world wide covenant to protect wild plant trafficking. Most of the confiscated plants were literally ripped off trees in their native lands.  Many are extremely rare, many others are endangered.

The Zoo is one of a few places in the USA that receives these plants with the mandate to keep them alive.  They are not allowed to sell any plants, or their seed.  Their mandate causes a few problems: successful growing and continuing confiscations mean that the orchids grow and sometimes divide into many plants that all require more space.  That is the current conundrum of this orchid greenhouse; serious overcrowding.

The collection has many exceptional species of various orchids.

Many times, the confiscations involve many plants of the same species.

The next plants are all the same species, as nature would have it, the two left ones are an alba version of those on the right.  It's quite rare to see them together like this.

After an hour or so in the greenhouse, we walked down the alley of the big cats.

Next to the leopard was this little sun bear, looking around to find out where the keepers hid the food.

I must admit to being guilty of photographing the animals, after all, that's what zoos house, but this zoo also has huge areas that are simply jungles, like below.  It's just a space between different areas and it's been staged as wild nature with waterfalls and all.

Here's another 'space'.

There are special trees, bushes and flowers planted everywhere; here's one you'll see in the better flower stores.

One of the many exhibits is reserved for very small birds, including hummingbirds. Here's a little guy having a bath near one of the waterfalls in the exhibit.

And now, the update on Pally.

As you might remember, Pally weighed in at a paltry 3.2 pounds when he was rescued.  Joan weighed him today: 6 pounds!  Not bad for two months worth of caring and loving.  Pally's still growing into a teenager, and is honing his balance skills.

Kathleen and Phillip's TV is projected on a wall on the far side of the staircase that comes up from downstairs.  Between the staircase and the living room is a knee-wall with a 6" ledge.  

Here's Pally watching us watching TV.  

We were concerned since a fall would have Pally at the bottom of the staircase.  He's already fallen off chairs, knees, laps, beds, gates, and just about anything you can fall off of...

In roughly the same area, Pally's on the knee-wall trying to figure out how to get onto the lampshade.

So much to learn...

So far, no worries...