CLICK & DOUBLE CLICK: CYBERSPACE CAN BE A ZOO WITH ANIMALS EVERYWHERE (COLUMN 9)

Cybertip: Place your cursor on a link, but don't click. Netscape will tell you where you're headed by displaying the URL address on the bottom gray line of the browser screen. In this way, you know where you're going before being flung through Cyberspace. You can also write down the address for a later visit.

Are you a pet person? The Internet has a wealth of information about pets and animals, whether you have a furry or scaly friend at home.

Someone somewhere has researched almost every kind of animal and posted the information on the Internet. In fact, there's probably a newsgroup somewhere to talk with other pet fanatics, whether you like ferrets or poodles, fish or pandas.

The first step on our surfin' safari is the Electronic Zoo.

http://netvet.wustl.edu/e-zoo.htm

Joni: Notice that this page comes to you from Washington University in St. Louis. It started as a way to organize veterinary information on the Internet. It was expanded to include information on almost every kind of animal. The creator teamed up with other people interested in pets. Since June 1995, he's had 442,132 visitors.

Peggy: The colorful entry page has lots of information on animal health, publications, organizations, newsgroups, mailing lists and web picks, including a best animal-related web site of the week. The past picks give lots of good information on animal research. Basically the whole site is a giant collection of links.

Joni: The site has lots of cartoon images giving a feeling that it is geared for children. But there's a lot here for adults, too. You can search by animal for information on birds, cats, cows, dogs, ferrets, fish, horses, pigs -- you get the picture. There are buttons for wildlife, zoo animals and fictional animals. Under dairy cows alone there are more than 75 links including Moo Milk Please.

Peggy: If you need more information about your favorite animals, you can link to animal soundbite page and download moos, woofs, cockadoodledoos, clippity clops, squeals and much more. Or you can view collections of animal image links, probably over a hundred for animals from A to Z.

Joni: You could spend a lot of time at this site. Another good springboard for hours and hours of animal exploration that would take you all over the world can be found in California at the world-famous San Diego Zoo.

http://www.sandiegozoo.org

Peggy: Cyberspace has gone wild. The electronic zoo includes a special place about pandas. Two giant pandas arrived at the zoo Sept. 10. They won't be ready to meet the public until November, but you can take a look online right now. Also, the site has photos of new babies at the zoo and Babytalk, a print-and-play game for children, to teach the special names for animal babies. Have you ever been called a "small fry." Recently hatched fishes are known as "fry." Other games are "Animal Tracks" and "Gulp."

Joni: The San Diego Zoo has the largest collection of mammals, birds and reptiles in North America. Information and photographs of most of these species can be found on this website. They also have a lot of unique plants, and this information is on the site as well. The site is actually broken into several spots: the zoo, a wild animal park and the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species. This is where zoo professionals turn when they need to determine the sex of a bird or reptile or other such things.

Peggy: What happens to Fido or Frisky when they go to the great boneyard in the sky? You could remember them at the Virtual Pet Cemetery, billed as one of the first and largest online burial grounds. It can be found at

http://www.lavamind.com/pet.html

Joni: If you wish to immortalize your beloved pet in the tombs of cyberspace for eternity, here is you chance.

Peggy: The site is a collections of eulogies to pets, complete with photographs. Some write little stories, others poems like one to a pet bird, Emerson.

"Emerson you silly bird, you've left us in the lurch

You lasted only three days before falling off your perch."

Joni: Some are obviously written tongue in check, but others are quite serious.

Peggy: We had a little confusion trying to figure out how to put our pet in. We never found a link or an e-mail address. Good thing my dog Tasha is doing fine.

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Writing a column dependent on computer technology has its ups and downs. When the technology works, it's great. When it doesn't -- well let's just say we learned a lesson about waiting until the last minute to write.

We started with a plan to write from Joni's home computer, but no matter what we did, the machine wouldn't dial the telephone. No problem. We headed to work. But our local network provider's server went down without prior notice. We tried to get to the web via America Online somewhere else in the building, but that computer ran into memory problems.

Some days you ride the waves. Some days you're shark bait. Ouch.

Share your computer horror stories with us at movn@ldd.net.

See you in Cyberspace.

~Joni Adams is managing editor and Peggy Scott is a graphics editor/staff writer at the Southeast Missourian.