Caruso - the "singing" meerkat pup

A couple of days ago we decided to name another one of the pups.

As this little guy (we still don`t know, if its a male or a female) loves to screech so much and its voice is really squeaky, Christian suggested "Caruso" as an adequate name (see also "noisy meerkat pups") .

And if it`s a girl, we`ll change the name to either Montserrat (Caballé) or Maria Callas ;-)

I visited yesterday in really fine and warm October sun,

As it was around feeding time, the kats were already on the lookout for either "THE CAR" or "THE CART".

As soon as they spy either, they will get very excited, running to the door of their enclosure. If either vehicle doesn`t approach fast enough, they will start running up and down and pawing the glass frantically.

So this day was a GREAT day, as THE CAR AND THE CART arrived both!

The first snack they got were locusts which they had gobbled down within seconds.

I had the chance to talk to one of the keepers and he told me that Sayuri will now get up onto the large hill, too!

She is making great progress, her movements are getting more and more coordinated and when walking or running, she will no longer do this "crouching" close to the ground, but pushing her legs up like the other two pups do.

As their second course they got one big tray full of assorted cut vegetables, fruits and baby mice.

The baby mice were gobbled up within 30 seconds or so with Möfzi defending the last mice for herself.

As the dry vegetation had been removed from the enclosure some weeks ago, the meerkats now got the root balls of some large potted plants to scratch and destroy.

Shortly after feeding time everyone made a cat nap under the heat lamps.

I used the kats`napping time to take some pictures of my new christmas meerkats in the forest nearby.

Usually Christian will take pictures of my products, but this time he was busy and so I tried to do it myself. It was really fun and the forest had an enchanted atmosphere with the rays of the late afternoon sun coming through the foliage (which is still astonishingly green).

After about 1 hour or so I returned to the meerkat enclosure to watch the kats some more. They were quite active and Caruso was squeaking and screeching at the top of his lung very much to the visitors`amusement.

When he walked by and suddenly made a particularly lound and indignant "breeeehhh"-sound some of his "audience" burst into laughter. We`ll be looking forward to the next performance of this little meerkat voice artist ;-)

I hope I`ll soon be able to include some of his performances into the blog.