Yesterday afternoon I took the boys to the zoo and we had a ball.
First stop was the elephant exhibit and, WOW!, they were right there in front of us, nose to nose, on the other side of a huge plate glass window. The boys loved it. Two huge elephants were eating hay right in front of us.
The next really neat thing was the lion exhibit. When we first walked up, the female lion was standing just inside of the door to their cave looking very regal. She came out to the watering hole to get a drink and then she came straight towards us, to the edge of their area next to where the pit starts, and laid down. At some point the large, male lion came to the cave door and roared really loudly. I roared back at him pretty loudly and he roared again. We did this quite a few times and Nick joined in with roaring with me a few times too. Finally I stopped and the lion kept going a few more times and then stopped. His roars echoed within the cave so we could hear it really well. It was magnificent! And it's really neat because I had been pointing out a lion to the boys in one of their books and asking them what a lion says and then I would roar. Now they really get it.
Then, we went to see the bears. There was this huge grizzly bear and he was playing with this large red ball. He put it above his head and let it roll down his back. Then he swatted it into his big pool of water and jumped in after it. Eventually he swatted it out of the water and tried to get it but it went over the edge, into the pit and he lost it. He took off running towards his cave and went inside. He came back out and walked around a little, looking for something else to play with. Both boys were entranced the entire time we watched him.
We saw a beautiful peacock, which was making these wonderful calls that we mimicked and we saw kangaroos and many other interesting animals, including an amazing, up close view of the rhinos that was pretty awesome. The sea lions were sleeping, basking in the sun on a rock. Nick kept waving at them and saying "night night". Adorable.
Our last stop was to see the chimps, which was really neat too. There were three of them sitting together and one mama had a three month old baby that she was holding. At one point, these three came right up to the glass. There was a lot of paper and stuff in the exhibit because they had celebrated a birthday and left the stuff in there for them to play with. One of them had picked up a streamer and carried it with him to the window. He rolled up a piece of it and was chewing on it. He rolled up another piece and stuffed it in his nose and then he blew it out. It was quite funny. They had these fake rocks on our side of the glass, allowing the kids to climb higher and closer to the glass and all three of these chimps and the baby were right on the other side, within a few inches of the glass. The boys love it!
I have been to a lot of nice zoos but this had to be the most up close and personal zoo visit I have ever had. We really had a lot of fun and I was like a little kid, running while pushing the stroller from exhibit to exhibit and holding the kids up so they could see really well. I'm not sure who enjoyed it more, me or them!
