Antelope spit is really sticky.
Jul. 20th, 2002 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynAnd this is how you go about finding out.
Yesterday I slept late, which was a good thing, because I hadn't had a full eight hours' sleep in a while. (I hate sleeping in hotels; I never feel like I'm quite ready to go to sleep, because it's much too quiet to seem right, and the TV isn't exactly helpful in combating that.) I got out of the hotel and headed down to the Buckhorn Museum of Horns and Saloon to see what was being billed as 'Five Museums in One!', 'San Antonio's Greatest Attraction', and 'The Current Site of Jurassic Texas'.
A word of advice for those of you who, like me, fall on the liberal end of the political spectrum and have at least a passing interest in wildlife conservation: don't go. See, the Buckhorn is a museum of Texas history, which was interesting, and a museum of lots of cowboy stuff, which was also interesting in a train-wreck kind of way, but then it's a museum of Things People Shot, and a museum of Freaks of Agriculture, and I don't know what the fifth Museum In One is. The first floor is where they keep the dinosaur stuff (same floor as the saloon) and the exhibits on cowboys, longhorns, and the Texas Rangers. But it's also where they keep about eight gazillion deer heads, and heads of every kind of animal ever to bear horns or antlers. . . and then the second floor has more, and it has examples of the taxidermist's art made from pretty much everything a human being's ever shot at. Including two passenger pigeons, several rooms full of furniture made out of cow horns (nasty looking, but bearable), and quite a few examples of wastebaskets, coffee tables, and lamp stands made out of the feet of wild animals.
The part where the entry on one of the mid-size African antelope species very solemnly assured the reader that these creatures were known for savagely attacking at times. . . brrr. Frankly, after that the stuffed and mounted two-headed calf was nothin'. Even the two-bodied Siamese calf and the lamb born with three ears and eight legs wasn't as disturbing as the overall attitude towards wildlife in the rest of the place.
So anyway, I felt outright unclean after visiting the Buckhorn. True, I had turned out to be taller than the waxwork of Teddy Roosevelt (it didn't say if it was life-size, but it sure didn't say it was smaller), but that was about the only healthy thing - no, no, not true,t here was one other healthy thing in there and that was the Megaloceros skull in the Room of Freaks. Gorgeous mount of an Irish elk skull and antlers. . . anyway. Didn't feel right. Had to do something to make up for it. Almost went to the zoo again, but I saw a sign for Natural Caverns Wildlife Ranch - 'African Safari Texas Style!' - off I-35, exit 175. Took it.
For $10.75 or so you get one bag of food pellets. Add $4 or so to get the guide to the wildlife and the extra bag of food. Then stop at the visitor center to buy a camera. It is so worth it. You get to drive through the grounds at about 5 MPH and see more species of antelope than I'd seen in any one place except, well, the Buckhorn. Roll down your windows and you can feed the ones that want to come close. It's not just antelope, either; there's Sicilian donkeys and ostriches that'll try to carjack you. There's zebras who won't get their heads out of your car - there was one who kept trying to get at my cup of A&W Root Beer. There's Watusi cattle, also called Ankoli cattle, whose horns are as grossly disproportionate to their heads as Tim Curry's were in Legend. They've got fallow deer and sika deer (Japanese and Formosan) and real live elk and barasingha; they have Texas longhorns; they have live American bison and Cape buffalo. THere are tiny little gazelles and Barbary sheep and addax antelope that'll peer over the edge of your car window in the hopes they'll get a pellet, too. There are llamas, which are much better tempered than we give 'em credit for, and certainly nicer than the ostriches. Or the emus, which make the theory that birds are evolved dinosaurs WAY more believable.
And there are elands, which will stick their heads in your window and eat from your hand rather than wait for you to throw the food on the ground as it says to do, and this is how I found out that antelope spit is really sticky.
Long story short: if you're in San Antonio and can deal with driving 20 miles on the interstate, then about 10 miles on a state highway, go to the Natural Caverns Wildlife Ranch. You won't be disappointed. There's even a petting zoo when you're done if all you want is to scritch a friendly goat or fallow deer behind the ears.
City slicker, signing off.
Yesterday I slept late, which was a good thing, because I hadn't had a full eight hours' sleep in a while. (I hate sleeping in hotels; I never feel like I'm quite ready to go to sleep, because it's much too quiet to seem right, and the TV isn't exactly helpful in combating that.) I got out of the hotel and headed down to the Buckhorn Museum of Horns and Saloon to see what was being billed as 'Five Museums in One!', 'San Antonio's Greatest Attraction', and 'The Current Site of Jurassic Texas'.
A word of advice for those of you who, like me, fall on the liberal end of the political spectrum and have at least a passing interest in wildlife conservation: don't go. See, the Buckhorn is a museum of Texas history, which was interesting, and a museum of lots of cowboy stuff, which was also interesting in a train-wreck kind of way, but then it's a museum of Things People Shot, and a museum of Freaks of Agriculture, and I don't know what the fifth Museum In One is. The first floor is where they keep the dinosaur stuff (same floor as the saloon) and the exhibits on cowboys, longhorns, and the Texas Rangers. But it's also where they keep about eight gazillion deer heads, and heads of every kind of animal ever to bear horns or antlers. . . and then the second floor has more, and it has examples of the taxidermist's art made from pretty much everything a human being's ever shot at. Including two passenger pigeons, several rooms full of furniture made out of cow horns (nasty looking, but bearable), and quite a few examples of wastebaskets, coffee tables, and lamp stands made out of the feet of wild animals.
The part where the entry on one of the mid-size African antelope species very solemnly assured the reader that these creatures were known for savagely attacking at times. . . brrr. Frankly, after that the stuffed and mounted two-headed calf was nothin'. Even the two-bodied Siamese calf and the lamb born with three ears and eight legs wasn't as disturbing as the overall attitude towards wildlife in the rest of the place.
So anyway, I felt outright unclean after visiting the Buckhorn. True, I had turned out to be taller than the waxwork of Teddy Roosevelt (it didn't say if it was life-size, but it sure didn't say it was smaller), but that was about the only healthy thing - no, no, not true,t here was one other healthy thing in there and that was the Megaloceros skull in the Room of Freaks. Gorgeous mount of an Irish elk skull and antlers. . . anyway. Didn't feel right. Had to do something to make up for it. Almost went to the zoo again, but I saw a sign for Natural Caverns Wildlife Ranch - 'African Safari Texas Style!' - off I-35, exit 175. Took it.
For $10.75 or so you get one bag of food pellets. Add $4 or so to get the guide to the wildlife and the extra bag of food. Then stop at the visitor center to buy a camera. It is so worth it. You get to drive through the grounds at about 5 MPH and see more species of antelope than I'd seen in any one place except, well, the Buckhorn. Roll down your windows and you can feed the ones that want to come close. It's not just antelope, either; there's Sicilian donkeys and ostriches that'll try to carjack you. There's zebras who won't get their heads out of your car - there was one who kept trying to get at my cup of A&W Root Beer. There's Watusi cattle, also called Ankoli cattle, whose horns are as grossly disproportionate to their heads as Tim Curry's were in Legend. They've got fallow deer and sika deer (Japanese and Formosan) and real live elk and barasingha; they have Texas longhorns; they have live American bison and Cape buffalo. THere are tiny little gazelles and Barbary sheep and addax antelope that'll peer over the edge of your car window in the hopes they'll get a pellet, too. There are llamas, which are much better tempered than we give 'em credit for, and certainly nicer than the ostriches. Or the emus, which make the theory that birds are evolved dinosaurs WAY more believable.
And there are elands, which will stick their heads in your window and eat from your hand rather than wait for you to throw the food on the ground as it says to do, and this is how I found out that antelope spit is really sticky.
Long story short: if you're in San Antonio and can deal with driving 20 miles on the interstate, then about 10 miles on a state highway, go to the Natural Caverns Wildlife Ranch. You won't be disappointed. There's even a petting zoo when you're done if all you want is to scritch a friendly goat or fallow deer behind the ears.
City slicker, signing off.
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no subject
Date: 2002-07-20 12:10 pm (UTC)Horn-the-material can be taken from horn-the-animal-byproduct in thin mica-like sheets, though. Then you soften it by soaking in water and you can mold it to any form you like, rather like plastic. It eventually dries and is durable once again. I have a spoon made like this, and many combs used to be. Those are somewhat nifty. Drinking horns are reasonable painting palettes and carving media, and require some small skill to drink from and not wear, so those are all right -- but furniture??
Sorry to hear about the Buckhorn, and I'd probably avoid it too -- but that safari drive sounds nifty!
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2002-07-20 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-20 05:12 pm (UTC)-- L