haldoor

Our last guinea pig, Andy, died today.

After his mother Squeaka got ill and died last year (around this time) Andy and Ginger were still okay, and we had put them together in the hopes of having babies. That never happened. Some time later, both Ginger and Andy came down with whatever Squeaka had had, and Ginger passed away in August this year, but Andy had been hanging on. We looked after him as best we could, but there just wasn't any recovering from whatever it was that struck them down and Andy finally gave up the fight today.



Bye Andy; we loved you.

I'm in mourning. Auckland Zoo's tiger, Nisha died yesterday.

Here's the NZ Herald report, if anyone would like to read it:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10381616

And this is a picture of her that I took some time ago:



My kids and I are fairly frequent visitors to our zoo, which has always been improving things for the animals over the years and also been involved in preservation of endangered species. It's a fantastic zoo, with so much room for the animals, and the zookeepers do their utmost to ensure the animals are stimulated and happy. You just have to watch our "Zoo" programme about them to know this.

We went to the zoo a couple of weeks ago, and were really pleased to see them building the new enclosure for Nisha (she was in the old lion one, which had been concrete but had become beautifully overgrown and jungle-like) to house her and the new mate that they are bringing in September. The good news is that Oz is still coming, and they will bring Nisha's sister up from Hamilton to be with him, as Sumatran tigers are extremely endangered and they want to continue the breeding programme.

However, we will miss Nisha, she was an Auckland icon, and such a beautiful animal. May she rest in peace.