Because toucans ROCK!

My new favorite bird, the toco toucan. Give way, over-hyped penguins. You have met your match!

There is a park/zoo about a quarter of a mile from my house here. They have cool animals and stuff. Kinda like most zoos, I suppose. But the thing about this zoo is that even though they have these animals here, they didn’t have to go very far to get them. They’re all local animals, which at first thought would be kinda dull. A local animal zoo for someplace like Cleveland, Ohio would have rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, hawks, white tail deer, racoons, opossums and such. OK, but not much to write home about. But a local animal zoo here in the Pantanal? Jaguars, oncelots, anacondas, capybaras, alligators, giant anteaters, iguanas, emu’s, tuiuiu’s, giant river otters, tapirs, monkeys, macaws and of course- toucans! These things are like living cartoons. They’re even proportioned like a cartoon. And they look absolutely hysterical when they fly with those huge beaks. You half expect them to fall out of the sky when you watch them. Their preferred way to get about is to hop and I can see why. Their beaks are so big they have to constantly tip their head to look at anything. They’re chatty and very sociable birds, too. What’s not to like? I’ve seen a bunch of these flopping about in the wild already and I couldn’t help but smile each time. They’re like God’s little jesters.