My girlfriend went to South Africa / Racoon dogs

I know I've talked before about how Song gets to see lots of different countries, but I thought it would be cool to post up some pictures she sent to me of one of her recent flights to South Africa. So, for starters, here's a picture of a male with 4 females. Song told me that the tour guide said the male actually has 5 wives. Song said, "Would you want that many wives." I said, "No, that would just be a huge headache. I can't imagine being nagged in five different directions, or have having to listen to 5 separate stories of 'what I had for dinner' every day."


I told her about the ostrich farm in Tucson after I saw this.




She said the giraffe's tongue felt like sandpaper, and that "she would roll her tongue and make a little place for me to put the food." Song also said that there was tons of slobber flying every which way, and that it got all in the hair of the mom that was standing behind her.


The tour guide told her that when you pet the lion, you have to pet it hard because if you just pet it softly it will tickle the lion, which makes the lion think that you want to play with it. Playing, even with lion cubs, is not safe.

And now, for something from Korea:

Racoon dogs. Yes, they exist. Yes, it's not just some weird mistranslation. In Korea and Japan, there are things called racoon dogs. Look it up. This is a picture of a baby that one of my friends took. He lives about a mile south of me, and he swears that he sees them all the time when he's walking his dog. I've never seen one though. I always just see lots of cranes.