We are a little behind with the blogging from when my computer was broken. Now that it is up and running again, I have some older stuff to put up. Back in September we went to the zoo with my friend Jessica. She had never been before, and Elora was so excited to show her around and make sure she saw EVERYTHING. It was a long, but very fun zoo day.
Elora was excited to see the big lizards moving around. Usually they just sit still, but today they were walking around and eating. Well, this one was guarding the food dish and making sure none of the other lizards were eating. He was actually sitting on the food, and trying to crane his neck around to eat while still sitting half in the food dish. Greedy lizard…
The kids both love the big tortoises. This one was talking to us, while a little butterfly hung out on his back.
The crocodile was out of the water. Oliver informed us that he could “Eat You!” But Oliver says that about most animals…
We were lucky to see the monkeys out playing on the ropes. This is the baby monkey, now big enough to swing around on his own instead of always hanging onto his mama.
Oliver was super excited about the monkeys and started hanging on this bar so he could swing around like a monkey too!
The kids riding on the metal elephant while we look at the new baby elephant inside the elephant house.
The kids really like the penguins, not so they can see the real birds, but so they can play around these pictures of the penguins. It keeps them occupied for amazingly long periods of time every single time we visit the zoo.
Hanging out behind the cut out penguins.
We got to see the river otters out playing. They were chattering away, and the kids were fascinated to watch them and hear the funny noises they were making.
We went to the insect house for the very first time, and thought this was an interesting mural on the side. Any thoughts on the meaning of the picture? We just concluded it must be really old since this zoo has been around for hundreds of years and I don’t see many mosaics on the newer exhibits…
Oliver telling us that the big grasshopper will “Eat You!”
Elora LOVED the insect house. Here was a spot where she got to use the magnifying glass to see the bugs “get bigger!” She made us examine every single bug cage, and I tried to suppress the shuddering as I watched bugs crawling all over the place… The best part which I could not get a good picture of, was the stick bugs. I looked in a big glass case for about 5 minutes because I knew something must be in the cage, but I could not find anything. Finally a man was pointing out a stick bug to his friend. It was over a foot long. I am not kidding. Then I started looking and realized there were at least 15 stick bugs, all huge, and I had not seen any of them. CRAZY. Elora likes them, she had fun looking for the “sticks with legs”.
Elora hanging around by the wild pigs. It was fun to visit this section of the zoo, we have never seen any of the exhibits in this area before. I can’t believe it took us two years to find the insects, wild pigs, reindeer, and buffalo…
Ollie hanging out with the goats. He really loves petting the goats. Today a little girl opened the gate and three of the goats escaped! Then a man had to wrestle with the goats to get them back inside the pen. Oliver didn’t want to pet any of those goats after that. He stuck with the baby ones.
Elora hugging a goat. She loves all the animals.
There is a nice pavilion at the zoo with a restuarant, and we decided to try it out. Here are the kids making music with their forks while we waited for their food. Elora had frankfurters of course, Oliver took her bread and refused to eat anything else, of course, and Jessica and I shared the Karnter Kasnudeln and Kaiserschmarrn. Two of my favorite things!
We finished our day at the Koala bear house. The koalas had just been fed and were awake! And walking around. These are some of Oliver’s favorite animals lately. He loves to see the little bears. We were lucky to also see the big cats being fed, which I don’t have a picture of, but it was pretty neat to see all the tigers and jaguars up close as they all sat around eating rabbits and such…
I realized while making this post that I have no pics from the entire day of me or Jessica, which is amazing because I took tons of pictures. But we had a great day at the zoo.
