Isle of Wight Part 3: In which we learn that shoelaces are a delicacy for exotic birds.

Thursday: A very rainy day. Explored Ryde, where we  meandered in and out of shops, and dried out in a cafe over a hot chocolate. Back to Newport for a quiet afternoon of reading followed by a pub meal. No photos.

Friday: Off to Amazon World for one last day of animal-viewing.

Many of the ‘habitats’ that you could wander through included free-flying and roaming birds, some of which were quite large, and not shy in coming up to us to see if we had any food. One grey-winged trumpeter was apparently convinced that Tom’s shoelaces must be edible, and tried quite hard to prove this to us.

We got to the ringtailed lemurs just in time to watch them having lunch, and were even allowed to go into the enclosure with them (after a warning that, despite their cute appearance, they can be pretty possessive about their food; luckily no-one was mauled).

We had our own lunch in the cafe a little early, which turned out to be a wise decision; firstly, it meant that we avoided queues for ordering food and were able to sit wherever we wanted, but more importantly it meant that we were able to wander through the zoo on our own whilst all the other visitors were eating, and thereby had prime viewing spots for watching the animals being fed.

The highlight of the day (and maybe even the week) undoubtedly came right at the end, when we watched the ocelots being given their dinner. There was a male ocelot in the enclosure when we arrived, and we thought that he might be the only one. He was such a handsome gent that we didn’t mind in the least, though, and happily watched him curl up and wash his paws while we waited for a keeper to arrive with the food.

When they did, Mr Ocelot was shut into a separate, walled-off enclosure while they laid out two round containers with food stuffed inside, for the cats to find and work out how to extract. After the keeper had left, we expected to see Mr Ocelot make a reappearance, but a different door was opened instead, and out came a female ocelot with a cub! We didn’t know that the zoo had a baby ocelot at the time of our visit, so this was a wonderful surprise. We stood and watched for ages as the cub played with his food, stalked his mother’s tail, jumped on her head, and generally acted like an overexcited kitten (which, essentially, he was). Indescribable cuteness abounded.

Saturday: Home, after a beautiful week, and wishing that we had a baby ocelot.

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