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I went with Snorth last weekend, and it was delightful. I love all of God’s creatures, but I especially love crested geckos. And lo, there were many a crested gecko there. I got to hold two of them! One even licked his eyeball clean! And I exploded with happiness! I also forgot to take pictures of him while I was doing this exploding, so I found some good pictures of crested geckos online that I will post here. Imagine I’m holding one of those.

In that last pic you can really appreciate their windshield-wiper feet that allow them to stick to glass like suction cups. Crested geckos are also called eyelash geckos because of the little ridge of eyelash-like scales over their eyes. They’re just the greatest.

So, The Reptile and Amphibian Show happens semi-annually at the Westchester County Center, which is a giant hall, and the hall was filled to the brim with beasties in plastic containers. As we came in, the first booth on the right had this grotesque 3-D display.

Welcome to the reptile and amphibian show! We have corpses taped to paper! Enjoy your breakfast that you’re trying to keep down right now!

But at that booth, there was a smootchie little Western Hognose Snake. Hognoses are known for being excellent pets, laid-back and friendly (as friendly as snakes get). And I got to hold this little fella. What a sweetheart.

They live for about twelve years and get to be a bit bigger then a garter snake. You can’t appreciate it in this pic, but the hognose snake is called the hognose snake because its little snoot turns up at the end like a tiny cold-blooded piggie.

I think it looks more like a shoehorn with eyes, but it’s called the hognose, and hognose-named it shall remain.

So Snorth and I pottered around commenting on the beautiful patterns on all the beasties (quick recap: they were very beautiful) and we saw a little boy chillin’ with some big ole lizards. Big. I took pictures of the lizards with the child so you can see the scale.

And I got a shot with some flicky-flicky tongue action! I think the lizards were plotting to eat the child.

And there was a man selling a variety of reptiles with his favorite on his shirt, literally hanging out.

I was so envious. I want a dragon hanging from my shirt all day. I talk to myself a lot, and I could pretend I was talking to the dragon instead, which is slightly less insane-looking.

This particular vendor had a pretty standard snake set-up, which I took a picture of so you could see it. And one of the snakes was shedding, I think.

See him? Lower right-hand corner? And not only were there snakes and frogs and lizards, there were also tarantulas and walking-stick bugs and giant African millipedes. They really covered the whole creepy-crawly gamut. It was wonderful, and I can’t wait to go back next time, if only to cuddle my beloved geckos.

Last weekend I went to the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival. I heard there would be bunnies and llamas and alpacas and punkin’ chunkin’, I just had to go. So my mom and I took the two-hour ride up to Rhinebeck, NY. The weather was gorgeous, the leaves were changing and it was just so durn pretty. And lookit – I took pictures.

Right in the entrance you were greeted by a pen with two lovely rams with spotted noses and pretty horns.

Then immediately after that, there were lemurs! I know! I was surprised too.

Ring-tailed lemurs, three of them hanging around a heat lamp:

And a brown lemur who looked slightly deranged and sleep-deprived, but I think that’s just how they look:

And a super-Qte kangaroo sunbathing.

Mmm, tasty sun. Do you see the pouch-hole? It’s a lady roo.

Then there’s the food booths, all kinds of predictable and unpredictable fair options. I had just had brunch (I really freakin’ love a good Bloody Mary. It’s always a good day when you start with alcoholic gazpacho.) so I passed on pretty much everything offered, but they had deep-fried dough, baked potatoes with a myriad of toppings, ice cream, caramel apples (okay, I TOTALLY had one of those, SO worth it), sheep cheese sellers and this booth, which clearly sold a little of everything.

Well-painted signage, too. My favorite are the two signs inside the booth, one for pickles and one for cappuccino. It reminded me of one of my first dates with Cricket, when we went to the Museum of Natural History (“the wacky evolution museum”). We had toured it and needed lunch so we went to the cafeteria and I learned an important thing about Cricket, which is that he liked to dunk food items into other food items regardless of what either of those items are. We get lunch and Cricket gets a slice of pizza, some garlic knots and some raspberry coffee. You can tell where this is going. Garlic knots right into the coffee. I was like, “O …kay, that’s an intriguing flavor combination.” Meanwhile a greasy garlic film is forming on his coffee and I’m considering dumping him right there, it was so gross. I didn’t and I’m glad I overlooked his strange dunking fetish. But when I saw the pickles and cappuccino signs right next to each other, I thought perhaps if Cricket was there, he would consider that an excellent dunking situation. Moving on.

Shortly after the food options was the fiddling competition. Really. I have pictures. Look, fiddling.

Waiting for their turn to fiddle.

More kids waiting for their turn to fiddle. I had no idea there were this many fiddle-playing aficionados in upstate New York.

And then, sheep. A great multitude of sheep. Come meet some sheep. This one had cool horns.

Different angle on horny (tee hee!) ram.

These are sheep getting judged for whatever sheepish (snork!) qualities the judges look for. I also learned sheep hate being judged.

They make a shrieking “BAAAAAHAA!” noise and try to kick, they are not all poised like show dogs. However, outside the ring, they can imitate lap dogs.

Awww. That’s Sue. Sue the Sheep. She likes to sit on her owner’s lap and just hang out. Isn’t she sweet?

Every farm that was there got a pen, and you could hang a sign telling people who you were and what kinds of sheep you bred, wool you had, etc. Most signs were just big vinyl ones, but this one was different and charming.

And this one made me want to give the owners of the farm a big underpants wedgie.

Then we moved onto the llamas. Big, fluffy llamas. Here is a llama peering at me through clothing made with his fiber. He’s an inquisitive llama.

But some llamas are not as bright. This llama was staring off into the distance. See how his mouth is full of hay? He’s not chewing it. Just, you know, blankly staring. Holding hay in his mouth. I would like to think that he was thinking about something very important that required all of his brain power, but I’m guessing he was listening to the breeze gently flow through his empty head.

There were alpacas there too, but I forgot to take pictures of them. Just imagine a smaller llama with a cushion of fluffiness on their heads. That’s what an alpaca looks like. There were also some rabbits there, angora and lionhead rabbits, and they were just delightful. I was so busy petting them that I forgot to take pictures of them. I found some on the internet, though.

Lionhead rabbits:

Angora rabbits:

And did I mention there was some wool at this thing? Oh, there was wool.

Rooms and rooms of the stuff.

WOOL. TONS OF WOOL.

By then, Mom and I were tired, so we headed out and on out way back to the car, we saw the kangaroo again. And the little joey was poking its little joey face out of the pouch! Everyone standing around melted like sno-cones in the sun. So precious.

Also, I wanted to add that I saw a woman there with a baby boy, and the baby boy was sporting the most delightful hat.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=16012273

That’s the baby, and that’s the hat. Go buy it for everyone you know. The hat, I mean.

And this woman has a video blog about 2006’s festival (which looks identical to this year’s festival) I recommend you watch it.

http://letsknit2gether.com/2006/11/01/episode-005-nys-sheep-and-wool-festival/