Later this week, the Woodland Park Zoo kicks off their annual Fall Fecal Fest, during which you can procure (or enter to win) Zoo Doo, a delightful "blend of animal manures [elephants, hippos, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, oryx, ponies, and others] mixed with straw bedding, grass, leaves, and wood chips" from the zoo grounds. Apparently this shit's good for composting, fertilizing, and mulching. For more info on prices and pick up, call the (ugh) poop line......

The Woodland Park Zoo Humboldt penguins are gonna be pissed when they hear about this. Sure, their new fancy-schmancy habitat, set to open next summer, will be much appreciated, but knighthood? Priceless.......

Ballard car photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr contributor pdgibson My Ballard lets all you Ballard-drivers know that a traffic camera has been installed at the busy corner of 15th and Market.The Rainier Valley Post reports that Ana Ortega, the principal at Ali Kurose Middle School has resigned in the midst of an SPD investigation into sexual abuse by a teacher's aide at the school.Phinneywood is mourning the loss of another Woodland Park Zoo animal. Last......

When Seattlest was just a wee lesbian growing up in a small southern town, we did what we reckon other wee small-town lesbians did: we listened to a lot of k.d. lang and the Indigo Girls. We went on long road trips across the whole state with the windows down, our other closeted friends with us, singing "Galileo" at the top of our lungs. Ah, those good ol' days of closeted small-town life. It's......

Seattlest is a big fan of graffiti, as long as it's not some silly kid tagging the side of someone's house. We like graffiti as art, we appreciate political statements writ large on sidewalks and the walls of abandoned buildings. We're not advocating anything, we're just saying. And now, the city is down one more fabulous graffiti mural. A kindly gentleman interested in saving this particular mural (near the Zoo, at 57th and Phinney)......

ART & TRAUMA: The Center on Contemporary Art in Ballard is kicking off its series of "After Dark" events with Slow Healing—a documentary/multi-media presentation about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have returned from the field with Traumatic Brian Injuri (TBI). There'll be a slideshow at 9 p.m., followed by Butoh dancing and SEA SHOW. 9 p.m. // CoCA Ballard // $10-15 suggested donation ROOTS NIGHT: When this Seattlest talks about "roots,"......

OPERATION BRIGHT PINK FLAMINGO: If you were at Myrtle Edwards Park last weekend, you may have noticed a city-approved flock of plastic flamingos hanging out on the lawns. Lest you prematurely begin the spiral into "WTF, can't we just have normal public art," let us inform you that the flamingos were only visiting to remind everyone that real Chilean flamingos are available as of tomorrow to gawk at over in the Woodland Park Zoo.......

Want to name a baby gorilla? Happen to know Swahili, Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba? Then this is the contest for you! The Woodland Park Zoo is inviting the public to participate in naming the latest addition to the zoo's gorilla family. The baby girl gorilla was born in October and is in need of a name that reflects her species land of origin, Africa. Sadly, Seattlest's Swahili and Igbo skills are rusty at best...okay, non-existent.......

The eternal feud between evolutionary rivals bears and crows finally came to a dramatic conclusion recently at the Woodland Park Zoo, as the persecuted bears claimed a decisive victory over their winged foe, the goddamned crows. Jim Woodring was on the scene and documented the victory on his blog (click through the drawing below for a larger more readable version): This victory is a long time coming and benefits not only bears, but also other......

Kakuta Hamisi, a member of the Maasai tribe of Kenya, is working over the summer at the Woodland Park Zoo, talking to zoo visitors about Maasai culture and conservation. Hamisi, an Evergreen State grad, evidently likes his job--he recruited several members of his tribe to work with him. But Catherine Claiborne, a grad student at UW's Evans School, has a message for Hamisi: You are being exploited. She tells the Times that the exhibit could......

Buried in an P-I article about "The Jane Goodall of tree kangaroos" is this sad information: The Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle had two [tree kangaroos] until this past spring, when its female died at about age 13 1/2 from complications of avian tuberculosis. An 18-year-old male died a month ago of old age. The zoo is now seeking replacements from other zoos. The fuzzy, furry, awkward animals were in the "Day and Night......

-Tim Eyman's car tab initiative ain't gonna make it on the ballot which makes him 0-3 lately: No car tab initiative, no legally mandated bigotry and his Vader costume was nowhere near as funny or as cool as Cee-lo's. -The Seattle Times photog who got hit in the head by a baseball is alive and well enough to recount the ordeal in all its terrible detail ("They tell me I convulsed on the ground......

After kicking our collective asses for four consecutive days, the heat is finally backing down. So pull yourself together. Go outside again -- especially to Capitol Hill this weekend. Tuesday 25th >>> The Long Winters at Sonic Boom in Ballard. Putting The Days To Bed, the third LP from Seattle's The Long Winters, combines the lyrical intimacy and melodic complexity of the Ultimatum EP with the guitar pop rave-ups of the bands previous full lengths.......

If you don't have kids, stay the hell away from Zoomazium at the Woodland Park Zoo. We say this not just because you won't be let in without a kid (the sign says "no adults without kid supervision" -- get it? Ha! Parent humor), but because your head will likely explode when exposed to toxic levels of prepubescent ruckus. If you've got kids, though, Zoomazium is a godsend. We've got a nine-month-old (and when we......

There used to be a time that, beyond our natural concern for all life, we could really give a gigantic crap about elephants. They're big - That's their defining characteristic. Whoop dee doo. There's a lot of big stuff in the world. Big stuff makes humans feel small which we tend to like. But in Bamboo's case we read a rare affecting guest editorial in the Tymes once that made us care and made him......

Seattle's the most well-educated city in the country, says the AP. 51% of Seattle residents graduated college, more than any other U.S. urbanoland. And yet we built two giant sports stadia right next to each other! Go figure. The Woodland Park Zoo artificially inseminated one of its elephants today--Chai, who bore little Hansa five years ago. We're not sure what zookeepers used to get Chai in the mood. If we'd been asked we'd have......

Zoo Doo is a program from the Woodland Park Zoo that allows Seattle residents to buy bear shit, ostensibly for their gardens. Want a garbage bag full? You can have it! A truck-load? Possible! Seattlest would like to know if we could just get a dime bag of the stinky stuff, but there's no mention of less than intent-to-distribute quantities in the press release. Not only is there a program to buy bear shit from......

The third album by mighty morphin' power-poppers the New Pornographers, Twin Cinema, goes on sale tomorrow. For Seattlest, this is like Beatlemania meets Pottermania, except that Pornomania likely won't be nuts enough to inspire a Robert Zemeckis film. We downloaded "Twin Cinema" from the Pornographers' website weeks ago. We heard "Jackie Dressed in Cobras" on KEXP this weekend. We've read a ton of good reviews of the new album. Because we're so giddy with anticipation,......

It's not every day that a personal acquaintance of Seattlest makes A1 of the Seattle Times. (Without connection to scandal of some sort, we mean.) But that day is today. Jan van Oosten was an internationally known bird expert (and former director of the Woodland Park Zoo). When he passed away in May, he left his family with an enormous collection of avian paraphernalia to offload somehow. There are thousands of bird prints and dozens......

If you are a bad baseball player, you get transferred from the major league Seattle Mariners to the minor league Tacoma Rainiers. Evidently, the same holds true in the animal world. Prickly pachyderm Bamboo, an Asian elephant at Woodland Park Zoo, is moving to Tacoma's Point Defiance Zoo, a "national leader" in mammal misfits. What's Bamboo's major malfunction? The 38-year-old female lashes out at the younger elephants (possibly because of their obsession with low-rise jeans).......

Ever since catching The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill at Seven Gables last week (where it's still playing), Seattlest has been wondering where our St.-Francis-and-the-birds moment is. Turns out we can skip the 15 years of homelessness in San Francisco; it's at the Woodland Park Zoo. The Seattle Times astounded us with this probing, in-depth article on the Zoo's new feed-the-birds exhibit, which begins: Bonzer, you little beauties! Because the Willawong Station exhibit includes Australian......

Animal lover? Music lover? Both? No matter what, Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo has you covered, as they've just announced this summer's ZooTunes lineup!...

-The M's start playing something vaguely resembling baseball. -Boeing's charming CEO is fired for his inability to keep it in his pants. -Seattlest explores the Seattle skyline with Flickr. -We look into what it will cost to have 50 Cent rock your Bar Mitzvah. -Where else are you going to one-stop-shop for hundreds of lady bugs and mathematics books? -Seattlest gets our porn on at the renovated Taboo. -We envy L.A.'s closely contested mayoral election.......

Seattlest has seen flight demonstrations at the Woodland Park Zoo, and at the time we couldn't help thinking, "Why doesn't the bird just fly off?" We watched as a falcon flew out over the zoo and was out of sight for nearly a minute before returning safely to a trainer's gloved hand. This was performed repeatedly. "Why doesn't the bird just fly away?" Seattlest wondered. Well, the bird just flew away. It turns out Kenai......