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Pica Adventure in Long Beach: LA Zoo Sidequest

June 1, 2025

At long last, one of the two promised followups (and good news for word-haters, it’s mostly just photos). The LA Zoo was nice, but a lot of exhibits were closed for construction; the ones that were accessible mostly either had their animals hidden, or were designed in such a way as to make seeing and/or taking pictures of the animals difficult. To my great personal chagrin the walk-through aviary was completely empty. Nonetheless there were plenty of cool animals to see, so it was still definitely worth the visit.

A gharial, Gavialis gangeticus, gunning for the award for “animal most likely to be mistaken for an animatronic in an 80’s sci-fi film”

Don’t quote me on this, but I think the LA Zoo’s gharials may be melanistic? Gharials get darker with age but supposedly normally retain a lighter belly, which these definitely didn’t have. The only pictures I could find of this same coloration were other people’s pictures of the same gharials at the LA Zoo.

Southern cassowary, Casuarius casuarius, and the first of many pictures featuring some form of Terrible Grid
Desert bighorn sheep, Ovis canadensis nelsoni. Oops All Ewes!
Grevy’s zebras, Equus grevyi, doing their best Janus impression
Male southern gerenuk (Litocranius walleri) stanced up supervising his ladies
Sarus crane (Grus antigone), the world’s tallest flying bird
Abyssinian ground hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus) showing off its rat
Crested caracara (Caracara cheriway) beloved wife of black vulture!!!!
Serval (Leptailurus serval) luxurious upon its shredded document throne
Chimps (Pan troglodytes) in a tomato-centric Renaissance composition
Aldabra tortoises (Geochelone gigantea)

The non-zoo animals may have been more entertaining than the zoo animals. These ground squirrels were all over the exhibits, stealing food, and completely unafraid of the zoo animals. There were also a lot of ravens, which almost made up for the red-billed blue magpie not being visible in the aviary.

…Almost.

To access the TRASH CAN you must defeat the TRASH MAN

Pica

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