…. I’m not sure how long ago I had the idea of creating a miniature zoo, but work has finally begun!

I had told Kim about my childhood dream of making a little zoo, using my Mom’s discarded strawberry baskets, and the assortment of toy animals I had on hand. It was a dream that surfaced repeatedly as strawberries were consumed by my big family. Kim thought the idea curious and "sweet." This mid-summer, while we were browsing in her favorite hobby supplies store, she noticed a set of animals that were realistic enough, and sweet enough that she thought they might do for me. When I saw them, I thought they were perfect…and the 20 animals we bought that day became the Core Collection of our miniature zoo.

Kim pestered me the rest of that day…"Aren’t you going to make your zoo this weekend?"… She was surprised - and she admits now - a little skeptical when I described to her that my idea was to make the little zoo a lifelong project… a slow, incremental, steady kind of thing. But she still thought the idea sweet, and signed on. (Thank God! What would the Zoo be without her!)

Mom has been happy to supply us with plastic strawberry baskets, which we can convert into various cages.

Each figure in the Core Collection cost 99 cents, and was made in China. We love them for their exquisite detail and realistically painted features. Kim thinks some of them, however, will need repainting or darkening touch-ups for their details to stand out in the zoo exhibit settings.

September 28, 1998

As we continue to acquire animals, we have realized that sometimes we might find animals better suited for our exhibits, animals in better positions, and animals we can look at to make our own, or to make better photographs with.

(Making a set of photographs of the exhibits has become a passion of ours… that originally sprung from John’s insight that one of his favorite experiences with the zoo is simply having it around to look at…and when he’d considered sharing it with the local zoo, or a children’s library, etc., he thought it would be nice to have a little book or set of prints to look at.)

As we took various photographs of the zoo, we found that the magic of this little zoo sometimes is greatly enhanced by seeing it though the eyes of a camera… same thing goes for looking at it through binoculars … though John doesn’t like me to advertise that he has spent a significant number of weekend hours doing just this! … What a sweetie.