A Safari Weekend

.... no I didn't actually go on safari, much as I would like to. Sadly my weekends are too short to go all the way to Africa, but we did the next best thing: Woburn Safari Park! We had a really great time there, all my concerns about keeping wild animals in captivity were qualmed as it was clear the animals had plenty of space to roam around in. I did decide it was probably a little frustrating for the tigers and wolves who could see ibex, giraffes and other tasty looking morsels but couldn't actually get to them, but apart from that I was really impressed with how well the animals are looked after.

Highlights included:

• PENGUINS! They had big signs on their pen saying 'we molt at this time of year so please excuse our appearance' - they still looked pretty awesome to me. Especially when they decided to act all macho and march off in a line around the edge of their pool. They are such dudes!

• LEMURS! Who doesn't love lemurs? If you don't, go and watch Madagascar and come back to me once you've seen them. These ones all have names and seem fairly friendly with humans - their ranger certainly got to stroke and cuddle them. And Angel (a red-fronted lemur) was carrying a diddy tiny lemur on her back. Apparently it was nearly a month old, doing brilliantly and fairly large for its age. Looked pretty tiny to me.

• GIRAFFES - doing the splits! Yup, in order to get some of the grass, the giraffes spread their front legs almost into the splits in order to get closer to the ground. It's a hard life being so tall. I hadn't really figured out quite how tall they are until one decided to walk in front of the car in front - the scale of seeing an animal more than twice the height of a normal car is incredible. 

• MONKEYS! These guys seemed friendly... and then slightly aggressive. Three of them were definitely not happy monkeys and were fighting each other on top of other people's cars. They seemed fairly determined to do some form of damage and did eventually manage to get a windscreen wiper off one of the cars. Luckily all the monkeys seemed not to like our car so we were able to just watch them happily. There was also a very cute tiny baby monkey being protected by its mother. It was pretty hard getting a shot of it (especially as our windows had to be up at all times) but I got one that was nearly in focus...

• TIGERS - I'm always astounded at how elegant these creatures are. We only saw one but he came very close to us and walked straight in front of the car to go and drink from the pond on the other side of the road. Beautiful, stunning creature. 

• LIONS, BEARS, WOLVES & RHINOS - in fact a whole host of other animals. I was quite impressed that the bears and wolves seemed pretty happy hanging out with each other. You could sense the power of them but they were definitely relaxing, not up to much really. 

All in all, we had a fantastic day and I really enjoyed it. I haven't been to a safari park since I was really young so it was quite an experience. I suspect my inner child possibly came out a little too much as I was way too excited - and took far too many photos! 

This morning I woke up with a very safari-themed idea... safari soft toys! So, in honour of my weekend, I designed and made a giraffe toy. I was thinking of making a few different animals and making them into a child's mobile. What do you think?