Zoo visit!

For Baby J’s second birthday we went to the zoo.

It was a last minute idea that manfriend had while she was browsing an animal magazine featuring zoo animals and I had to pack bags and get everyone ready in ten minutes, but for once, the hurry was worth it.

We all enjoyed the visit and I had a chance to take some pictures of exotic animals.  I had to snap them in a few seconds because manfriend ran (literally, RAN) through the whole thing and whenever I stopped for a pic he would get two animals ahead of me but still, I got some pictures.

These are Cindy and Poppy.  Imaginary hippo’s are way more fun as these two stayed exactly that way for presumably hours.

This girl was the coolest animal in the whole zoo.  And I mean that on many levels;  lioness’ are cool on their own, they are strong, poised animals.  This one also posed with people, not on purpose I’m sure, but she gave some visitors a glare that was worthy of a cat walk.

It saddens me to share this after the events of last week.  This babe slept the whole time.  I thought he didn’t looked well nourished, but I’m no lion expert.  The blur you see on the left side is not the camera, it is the clear wall that prevented both animals from snacking on visitors.

Bambi!

This is the part where I got all teary eyed and had to keep walking to the reptile area while manfriend showed Baby J the chimpanzees.  I focused the camera and that face just wouldn’t stop looking right at the lens with that sad face.  His eyes kept getting more and more intense and I had to step out from behind the camera and stand in front of him (or her, I don’t know) to apologise.  He’s knows where he is and why he’s there and I was just so sorry that he was in there.

Manfriend pointed out that they were surrounded by a magnificent tree, but they couldn’t touch it.  My only comfort was that they had a special schedule, so they weren’t in that space all day, just for a specific amount of time.  But still, sad me.

In the reptile area I saw the biggest salamander I’ve ever seen.  It was obviously not my favorite part AT ALL.  Also, this area was so humid that the smell was uncomfortable and manfriend got all hypochondriac and ran through it with Baby J before she could process the snakes.

This guy was asking for snacks in the face of people.  He was very energetic.

They had normal peacocks EVERYWHERE, literally, in all the areas (actually Baby J ran after one by command of manfriend’s mother, I have no idea why she thought it was a good idea to tell her to do that, but she was the one that had to ran after her).

But they had a white one! I had never seen a white one before.

This is Felipe, the rhinoceros.  We never saw him walking.

This is not a snowy white owl but that didn’t stop me from yelling “HEDWIG!”

This is a horrible picture of a great animal.  I was EXTREMELY exited about the aviary.

We really wanted to see this one, so obviously she was eating and didn’t left that corner.

And this?  This is a sleeping sloth.  He didn’t want to bother with some tourists, and I don’t blame him at all, but I was seriously disappointed at not being able to see him.  I mean, if I went to the zoo but couldn’t see the sloth, did I go to the zoo?!

We had a great time and I think it was a great gift, though we had a BBQ-jumping house-pool party the following week to share the birthday with the family.

It’s a joyful day today!