artist or zoologist?

I know for sure, if I wasn't an artist working with my hands, I would be a zoologist working with animals. I feel like I'm five when I say, "I love animals!"
One of the benefits of working for Martha's TV show, is once a while we have an animal expert guest, accompanied by animals of course! I am always very curious to meet them and yesterday I was lucky enough to get up close...

Here are two Barbary Lion Cubs that visited the show. They were bewitched by their new surroundings and it was difficult to get a shot of them staying still. Finally something caught their eye and brother and sister laid next to each other for a few moments.

I got to pet one of the cuties. You can tell by their paws, these are going to be some big cats! Apparently the last wild Barbary Lion was shot in Northern Africa in 1922. It saddens me, to say the least, that such an incredible creature is extinct in its nature habit.

Here's the spunky red kangaroo joey—amused with me taking her picture, she took a break from bouncing around the green room back stage.

After only 33 days of development, the kangaroo fetus (neonate) emerges out of its mother. It is blind, hairless and only about the size of a Lima bean. Taking about 3 to 5 minutes, it uses its arms to climb its way through the thick fur of its mum's abdomen into her pouch. It remains in the pouch for about 190 days before it is ready to come out; at which time, it will leave & return to the pouch for about another 50 days. At around 235 days old, the joey will leave mum's pouch for good.
So incredibly foreign yet fascinating! Imagine homosapians did the same thing—crawl out of mother's vagina, when you're the size of a pinkie mouse and burrow into her belly button...I could see it.