A fine and fancy ramble to the zoo

I spent about an hour this afternoon at Bad Boy Baritone's place photographing his brood of exotic pets, which now includes Rambo the Hedgehog (pictured above) and Rocky and Adrian the Sugar Gliders, all living in cages in his walk-in closet. Taking photos of the animals was no simple feat. Hedgehogs and sugar gliders are not like dogs, who generally jump around going, "Take my picture! Take my picture! Look how pretty I am!" or cats, who will pose for the camera but only after reminding you that they're only letting you take their picture because they want to, not because you want them to. Nope, BBB's exotic pets are much more difficult to photograph, mostly because they're constantly moving, so lots of my pictures turned out somewhat blurry (again, see above). Rambo takes little tiny steps, turning around, all while making this adorable muted squeaking noise. His back feels like a bristly hairbrush if you pet it back and something a lot less pleasant if you pet it forward.




The sugar gliders are cuddlier than the hedgehog; in fact, they're the softest things I've ever felt, so soft that if they were the size of rabbits and didn't have a habit of, you know, gliding from place to place, there would probably be sugar glider farms raising them for sugar glider coats. They have these long ridiculous soft tails that you can't see in the picture, teeny tiny whiskers, and enormous eyes. When BBB gets them out of the little bag where they sleep in their cage (nocturnal marsupials, you know), they make this hilarious noise that sounds exactly like an electric pencil sharpener. Once they emerge, it takes them a while to get used to being out, but then they're all over BBB, jumping and climbing and gliding around his room, and finding places to burrow. I can't imagine being anything other than a cat person, but these little ladies were incredibly cute, especially Adrian, the one who doesn't bite.

Tonight I'll be at a different kind of zoo, watching the last performance of Ballo.