Animal Magic

Today was a very busy for us, but the highlight was something we almost didn't go, but I'm really glad we went.

I learned a whole lot and I'm sure the kids did too. Right after, they wanted to find a hedgehog puppet and they did find one.

The show is put on by Mark Rosenthal from Animal Magic Inc.

See if I remember all the animals I saw... I should have brought a notebook as I was too far and my pictures are blurry.

There was a Great Dane there (a rescued dog).... he is huge and hasn't even grown to his size. Mark says, some dogs can sniff out people with cancer, before people know they have it themselves with 80% accuracy.

Anyway, first up was baby tarantula. The thing was huge (for a spider) and it was a baby... but I didn't think it was scary... maybe because I didn't see it close by and it's a BABY! She is already with baby, and guess how many babies they produce? couple thousands of babies if I remember correctly.



Next up was the blue head bird as he had a a patch of blue on his head. I forgot the official name. A girl came up and said 1, 2, 3, bang! The bird flipped over and played dead. The funniest thing is the bird sings Opera and Mark is not your Opera kind of guy but he has to listen to the bird sing opera on his drive here. LOL



Next we saw a milk snake, not to be confused with a deadly poisonous snake (eastern coral snake, I believe he said). Milk snake are red, black and yellow (red and yellow never touch) . And the eastern coral snake is red, yellow and black but with red and yellow touching. The rhyme is that if you see red and yellow, then its deadly something. I can remember as China's flag is red and yellow.

Then we saw a baby African crested porcupine. This one is domestic as it is raised in the US but in Africa, the African crested porcupine's quills are filled with bacteria. Their quills are also extremely sharp and stay in you if it makes contact with human skin. Their quills are like hair and will grow back. Porcupines cannot throw their quills at you so it it attacks you, it will have its back turned to you. The front hair is soft. This one the mom is not good with the babies and had twins. It gets fed on a milk bottle every 2-3 hours.


After that we saw a sloth named 7 (as in 7th deadly sin: sloth). Apparently, there are 2 toes and 3 toes sloth (count the front toes; the back legs always has 3 toes). They move so slow (0.07 mile/hour) that moss will grow on their fur. They are always hanging on to something and their claws are very sharp. The sloth got a tiny peanut out of the man's teeth. Extremely dangerous as the sloth could blind him or cut his throat. They only go to bathroom once a week.

Then we saw a baby anteater. Anteaters don't have any teeth but they can eat 100,000 of ants per day if I remember correctly. The man, however feeds the anteater smoothies (fruit +dog food for protein+water) instead of ants. Anteater are also dangerous as they have strong muscles and will use them rip stuff apart. I believe Mark held an anteater once on his shoulder and had to go to the hospital.

Last but not least, is Reggie, the hedgehog. It was a cutie. Unlike the porcupine, the quills will fall off if it make contact with skin and literally, Mark made Reggie disappear. He put Reggie into a box and next thing you know the box is empty. He ripped the box and there was no Reggie. It puzzled everyone and he is not telling his trick.

It was so great. Love it. Forgot to mention, if you would like to check out Mark's website, click here.