The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

Kerri is supposed to be posting the rest of the Europe pictures before she posts anymore zoo pictures.

 

But Mom and Dad were here this weekend.

And we can’t let the first pictures of Penelope on kerrimatt be on karenbob.

So these are from the first time Kerri saw Penelope.

Before she was named Penelope.

Penelope is a baby pigmy hippopotomus.

She has to nurse underwater.

It must be hard to hold your breath while you are eating.

She also has to watch out for Mom’s giant teeth.

It’s really not a nice place to stick your tiny nose.

It’s a rough life for a baby hippo.

Svalbard has reindeer.

Reindeer are just European caribou.

But Svalbard reindeer are weird.

 

There’s not much food on the island. So instead of travelling in big herds they travel in little groups of a mom, a dad and a baby.

And they are smaller.

With stubby little legs.

The little food there is has lots of rocks in it.

Which they eat by accident.

Which breaks all their teeth. So most of them die young of starvation.

Reindeer have antlers.

In the spring and summer antlers are covered in velvet, which brings blood to the antlers so they can grow. But this time of year the antlers are done growing, so the velvet is being shed.

Which leaves the antlers covered in blood.

And piles of rotting velvet scattered in the tundra.

It is pretty gross.

Then the antlers will be bare bone until they fall off.

Both the boys and the girls have antlers.

But the new babies from this year only have stubs.

We saw other animals from the boat too, but with both the animals and the boat moving the pictures are a bit abstract. See these are puffins.

And this is an arctic fox.

You can totally tell it’s a fox, right?

We saw a whale in the fjord.

It was between the mountains.

And the glacier.

It was a humpback.

We saw a lot of its back.

And its tail.

It waved its tail at us many times.

It was very drippy.

That’s because it started under the water.

Then flipped up.

Then showed us the back side.

Then disappeared back under the water.

One time it also showed us its head.

And it waved.

And the part between the head and the back, which I guess makes it the neck?

But whales don’t really have necks.

It didn’t breach for us though.

But it did blow.

Goodbye whale.