Life By Lindsey Rae

The Nashville Zoo has an annual event called "Ice Day" that I have been wanting to go to for about three years now and we finally made it this year. At Ice Day, they make up frozen treats for the animals and then have scheduled times where they feed them. The tigers, for example, get a 5-gallon turkey flavored ice block. Elephants get large fruit flavored rings of ice, and this sort of thing.

We ate free ice cream.

It was sooo humid and hot. Temperature was in the 90's and it had rained the day and night before so humidity felt like it was 100%!

Actually, I mostly wanted to go see the meerkats get ice treats. As I have said in the past, we used to be crazy about Meerkat Manor and we have our meerkat painting we got at the zoo auction last year. They were so cute...but a bit fat. These meerkats seem to be a little overweight. Their keeper called them, "pleasantly plump." As a result, they weren't moving very fast!

Yesterday I learned some very good news. As I have mentioned before, Jerrod and I LOVE the show Meerkat Manor. It's basically a narrated documentary type show on the daily lives of these families of Meerkats living in the Kalahari Desert. Unless you have seen it, it's difficult to really explain why it is so good, but....it's good. It's really just good.
Anyway, what I learned is that there is going to be a full length Meerkat movie coming to theaters in 2008! It is made by the makers of Meerkat Manor and is going to mostly revolve around the life of one of the main characters and most popular meerkats who died this past season from a snake bite. (I know, sad).
This is so exciting for us since we love them so much. I can hardly wait to see it.
Here are a few good meerkat videos. They're advertisements, but they are funny.

Yesterday I got an anniversary present, even though our anniversary date is not until the 25th. UPS brought it and Jerrod asked me if I wanted to open it...he always does that to me! And it drives me crazy because of course I want my present now, but I also want to save it so I have something special on the the day. So, I decided to wait to open it. But, then he convinced me because he said he wanted to see if it was OK and check it out in case he needed to return it, since he had bought it online...and didn't want to wait until the 25th, 'cause it might be too long. What a dilemma.
So, I opened it. I guess that's a good enough excuse right? I got a waterfall fountain for the new house. That's something I always wanted in my house...its a big one...like 5 feet tall. I always wanted something like that in an an entry way, but thinking of the space in my head, I don't think I would want to put it there in the new house. However I have other ideas...my brain is way too full of too many ideas all the time, but anyhow, I think I have some places I will want to put it. It also has an Asian look to it, which of course is great. So, I'm pretty happy about it.

I always have a hard time buying something for Jerrod...just because it's so much harder buying for boys! But I had the perfect idea....I thought. Jerrod loves Meerkats...we always watch Meerkat Manor...it's the best show...really funny and very interesting and I highly recommend it. I mean look at these little guys; how can you not love them? And they are so smart with the things they do...it's hard to explain...you just have to watch it.
A few years ago I saw these paintings that were done by elephants at the Nashville Zoo. They sell them to raise money to keep them. (I learned it costs them $900 a day to feed one elephant! That's what the told me when I told them it's too expensive to go to the Nashville Zoo. haha.) The paintings were really neat and I wanted to get one in the future. An elephant can paint better than you might think. Well, the other day I was watching the news and they were showing some local happenings, one being scenes from the zoo and I saw that they had the Nashville Meerkats doing some paintings too! They like, dip their little feet in paint and then let them run around on paper or something. I thought it was the coolest thing ever! This would be the perfect idea for Jerrod because it was so original. So, I contacted the zoo and found out that they were letting the Meerkats paint to sell at an auction fundraiser, which is not until July and that's the only way to get one! It's one of those dinner auction things. So, I had to tell Jerrod about it. It was too neat not to tell him; I couldn't keep it in...I wish he could have seen them on the news. But, I had to tell him that my great idea was turning out to be not so great because I couldn't get it by our anniversary. But, he said yesterday he still wants it. So, we are gonna go to the dinner and try to get one. It's a charity thing, so it's good. Gotta keep the elephants eating. And I want a Meerkat painting!!! For Jerrod, of course. :)