WIldlife
A dream soars
I drove out to Macon, Mo. yesterday to cover a pretty cool assignment. Media and journalism get a lot of flak for giving a lot of attention to negative stories, but this one has heart warming written all over it – even if it is a little bittersweet.
Ruth Payton, 82, of Macon, in red, watches Watson, a 5-year-old American bald eagle, take flight yesterday in Long Branch State Park. Payton, who is terminally ill with hemolytic anemia — a disease that prematurely destroys red blood cells — said she had always wanted to see a bald eagle. Her hospice worker, Randi Petre, contacted the University of Missouri’s Raptor Rehabilitation Project, which arranged for Payton to come see Watson be released back into the wild. The eagle was brought to MU’s Raptor Rehabilitation Project last month after being found in Randolph County with severe lead poisoning, likely the result of ingesting contaminated fish or deer.
Watson takes to the sky after being released over Long Branch Lake on Sunday afternoon.
Henry Doorly Zoo
A massive headache kept me from taking a ton of pictures during my fun day at the zoo, which made me pretty bummed, but I managed to get a few good frames. This was my favorite. The gorilla valley at the zoo has a walkway for the animals that goes over the the area the people walk in and this guy was just hanging out sunning/people watching.
Archives: Kansas City Zoo
In a few weeks I’m headed up to Omaha, Neb. to take some engagement pictures for a friend from high school. My friend, Hope, can be pretty silly and Tater (Mark) only added to the silly possibilities of this engagement shoot by proposing to her at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo.
I can’t wait to get up there and do some portraits in the zoo. On top of that I’m going back to the zoo with my sister and nephews the next day just for fun. I’m so psyched up that I dove into my archives and pulled some photos from the class trip I went on to the Kansas City Zoo my last semester of college.
