MINI-PHOTO ESSAY: COUGAR MOUNTAIN ZOO

My Big Camera leads a primarily rock n' roll life. It is usually only taken out at night, to be assaulted by my sweaty little hands and dancing feet at concerts. Today I thought since, one, it was a brilliantly sunny Saturday afternoon; two, I have children who like animals; and three, I like to take any sort of photographs, that a trip to a small local zoo would be a good mid-winter outing with the 60D (that's the Canon camera model, you comedians). The Cougar Mountain Zoo is located in Issaquah (ISS-suh-qwah), Washington, a suburb of Seattle (See-AT-ll) close to Lake Sammamish (Suh-MAM-mish). Issaquah is the original home of indie band Modest Mouse and is also home to the yummy Triple XXX Drive-In.

Now that you are properly oriented, you may view some photographs of wild animals. Right after I took this photo of this lemur, he and his other lemur buddies made such a racket you'd think Governor Scott Walker decided to gut their union, too. Surely lemurs have a union.

I decided to make the Australian animals look like criminals with mugshots, in honor of all those banished Brits who were shipped off FOR LIFE to ol' Oz.

Are you ready to KNOW SOMETHING? HOLD ON!

However, you may also like to know that the Crested Crane is the Miss Universe of the crane world. I know this because they have a second sign at the zoo.

So I paid them the attention I thought they would expect, being such lovely creatures.

Closer to the lake, people like kites.

I think this is an alpaca. It could be a llama, but I think, alpaca. I'm naming it "Bruce Springsteen." You are going to have to guess why.

I call this "cool."

Birds are so prehistorically weird. I always like taking pictures of them. I'm always grateful that they don't peck my eyes out. Hitchcock's "The Birds" was a problem for me as a child. FOR A LONG TIME.

This is wise advice.

And timely!

If you squint, you can pretend that this is the exceedingly-rare One-Headed Half-White Two-Bodied Tiger.

Sigh. Pretty sure if you get the stinkeye from a reindeer, your upcoming Christmas is doomed.

Well, time to go and get a Fudge Bar! OH WAIT. D'OH!

I need to have a talk with that reindeer. See you all tomorrow.