The Bahamas are incredible. These are a lovely series of islands. We had some time on Saturday to go to the zoo which Dorothea had recommended to us. I'm all in favor of this, as I said earlier, since I'm a zoo person. I love to look at the animals. The zoo in the Bahamas is known as Ardastra Gardens. It is fairly tiny, but is very clean and well kept. The animals are treated well and seem to appreciate their surroundings.

Ardastra reminds me a lot of Jungle Island in Miami, but it is much cheaper. There are many type of creatures here including two Jaguars and a couple Capybaras. The stars at Ardastra, however, are the birds. And the best birds in this zoo are the flamingos.

The flamingo's keeper is named Lexion and he is a very friendly fellow. Three time a day, Lexion brings the birds into the tiny arena at the zoo and marches them in front of the guests. It is a bit like doing close order drill. He tells them "about face", "right face", "forward march" and the birds do as he commands. Apparently, flamingos are shy birds but they do organize themselves into flocks. Lexion has been working with them long enough that they listen to him. What's more, he knows each one by name. He scolds them, corrects them, praises them, and dotes on them depending on the occasion and what is required. It is an amazing thing to see and we were very lucky that he stopped to speak with us.

At Adrastra, we also had a chance to meet Toby. Toby is a Moluccan Cockatoo who began squawking at us when we walked past his perch. I thought perhaps he was upset that we were staring at him, but it turned out to be the opposite case. His keeper told us that Toby doesn't like people staring at him without paying any attention to him. You have to go up and give Toby a scratch and a pat on the head. Otherwise, he becomes a very noisy bird.

Well, Lexion wasn't statisfied with just having us pet Toby. He brought Toby over to Gina and put him in her left hand. Then, he brought an Amazon parrot over and put him on top of Gina's head. You have to understand how proud I am of her. Gina is terrified of wild animals, but she decided to trust Toby and Lexion for whatever reason. She was even very happy about it as you can see in the photo and she told me that it was not an unpleasant experience. Let this serve as public notice that noone is allowed to tease her anymore when she runs away from domesticated creatures.

Lexion convinced Toby to give me a kiss. To be frank, I was a little more concernced about this development. I have seen similar birds crack walnuts between their beaks, so it is not a stretch of the imagination to think about what they could do to my nose. Toby is very docile, however (unless he is ignored) and so I decided it was probably not a big deal. Besides, if Gina can put away her fears, I can also.