Here begins the neat animals that usually only go out on the Zoomobile to school groups, etc... They have a nice little house with enclosures and we got to choose which ones we wanted Whitney to take out for us. She started with the chinchilla, which is on the endangered species list. I cannot tell you how soft this animal is, almost like it is not there it is so soft. It takes 300 chinchillas to make one fur coat; they only use the fur from their bellies (??) so a lot is wasted and many little chinchilla lives sacrificed. The kids loved petting him. We then got to pet a corn snake, not nearly so soft and cuddly as the chinchilla, but he was small and none of us felt threatened by him!! Next was the bearded dragon who lives primarily in Australia and are commonly seen just walking around all over down under. Although the spikes on them look very hard and sharp, they are not that tough feeling, sort of like a bendable plastic would be. They love to be held and will just let you stroke them for however long you are willing. Then we met Flower, the skunk, who has been de-skunked. We were not allowed to touch her (apparently, we are not allowed to touch any animal that is native to this area, I am not sure why) so Whitney held her for us and then put her back in her pen where she was quite playful and ran around a lot. This is in contrast to the picture I think most people have of skunks which is that they are sneaky and mean (just remember what happened to poor Trooper last spring with his skunk encounter) and unfriendly.
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