Animals on parade, funny tweets: Stories to brighten your week

From animals getting treated to private zoo field trips to an unlikely social media celebrity, let these good news stories lift your spirits this week.

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As our days of social distancing wear on, more and more good news stories are popping up across the Internet. Distilleries are shifting focus to producing hand sanitizer, communities are finding creative ways to support local restaurants and museums are coming up with myriad new ways to keep kids stuck at home both educated and entertained.

Here are three more stories to make you smile this week.

The animals are taking over

With zoos and aquariums across the nation emptied of their usual human visitors, zookeepers are giving animals the opportunity to take a field trip around the facilities, and it’s adorable.

At the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Tyson the prehensile-tailed porcupine paid a visit to the penguin exhibit. He seemed more interested in chowing down on his biscuit.

Meanwhile, the Humboldt penguins at the Saint Louis Zoo got to experience their exhibit from the visitor side and take an elevator ride to the upstairs offices – all part of the park’s #BringTheStlZooToYou initiative.

Although the Zoo may be closed to the public, we want to #BringTheStlZooToYou! We have asked our animal care team to share some photos and videos of our animals over the coming weeks. Please keep in mind we will be operating under unusual circumstances and limited staff. Our first priority is the care and well-being of our animals, but when we can, we will be happy to add something fun and positive to your newsfeed! 🐢🦓🦒🐜🦉🦛🦍 Yesterday, our Humboldt penguins (Pedro, Fernando, Chirrida, Guapo, Mona and Marco) took a field trip from their outdoor habitat to inside Penguin & Puffin Coast. They got to visit the Gentoo, king and rockhopper penguins, as well as the horned and tufted puffins. There was a quick stop at the gift shop (which was closed) and the offices upstairs before they headed back to their outdoor habitat. 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧 Need more penguin fix? Watch our penguins on our live YouTube webcam daily at stlzoo.org/penguincam

A post shared by Saint Louis Zoo (@stlzoo) on Mar 18, 2020 at 6:44am PDT

Tilli the aardvark got her town tour of Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, where she got to meet walruses Pakak and Mitik, and watch the fish in the Pacific Seas Aquarium.

Video courtesy of Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium

A flock of flamingos at the Texas State Aquarium got to explore the underwater exhibits of Caribbean Journey.

Hodari, a milky eagle owl chick at the Dallas Zoo, took a field trip to the Children’s Zoo to meet the koi fish.

Sarah and Jason, a pair of sibling forest Guinea hogs living at the Oakland Zoo, love going out on “hog jogs” to see the otters.

The meerkats were captivated by the visitor they received this week, a red river hog named Sir Francis Bacon, who took an extended walk through the African habitats at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Twitter’s newest sensation is an Oklahoma security guard

If you’re not following the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum on social media, you’re missing out. While the museum is closed for safety reasons, the staff has turned over the museum’s social media accounts to a security guard named Tim.

“I have been asked to take on the additional duty of social media management while the museum is closed,” Tim explained in his first Instagram post. “I’m new to social media but excited to share what I am told is called ‘content’ on all of The Cowboy’s what I am told are ‘platforms’ including the Twitter, the Facebook, and the Instagram.”

His posts range from the educational…

to the humorous…

but they’re always charming.

It takes an orchestra…

With social distancing orders in place across the country, musicians of all genres are finding new and creative ways to both practice and perform their craft. Musicians from John Legend to Garth Brooks are staging intimate concerts via Facebook Live, while the city of Memphis hosted the Get Live Virtual Museum Festival over the weekend, with three days of live performances.

While it’s one thing to perform solo or get a few members of the band together for an online concert, digitally wrangling an entire orchestra is quite another. But that’s just what the Colorado Symphony did this week.

Video courtesy of the Colorado Symphony

As part of the orchestra’s #PlayOn campaign, each member filmed themselves playing their part at home. These video and audio tracks were mixed, mastered and produced into a video.

“Music is the universal language, and it’s one of the things that can give people comfort during a stressful, difficult time. And if there’s a way we can share it, we want to,” Anthony Pierce, chief artistic officer, told The Durango Herald. “And I think maybe it sets an example in a certain way because you see that, ‘Hey, everybody is staying at home and they’re figuring out new ways of working.'”

So far, the orchestra has performed “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the horn section has put together renditions of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and “All By Myself.”

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