June 11, 2006
Roo at the Zoo
Don't be alarmed. That is not a lion biting the head off an adorable little girl. It's Roo taking a sip from the classic lion drinking fountain at Hogle Zoo. Mikey and I took her there yesterday for a fun-filled afternoon. I taught her a fun song to get her excited. It goes like this:
We're going to the zoo
We're going to the zoo
We're gonna have fun cuz
We're going to the zoo
Actually, it originally went like this:
We're going to the zoo
We're going to the zoo
We better clean up cuz
We're going to the zoo
Because we had to reshelve all the books Roo and Lucy had pulled off the bookshelf and placed onto her bed. Luckily, singing songs about cleaning up and how much fun it is really works.
The first thing Roo wanted to see was the monkeys, so despite the elephant head placed over the door (see below) that's where we went.
Unfortunately, the monkeys are all behind glass, so I couldn't get any good pictures without glare and reflection, so lets move on to the elephants!
There was also a butterfly building, but it seemed crowded, so we let Roo play on the caterpillar and take a turn looking through the eyes of a fly and then we moved on.
Penguins! But they just stood around, even though there was perfectly good dead fish in the water. They were apparently uninterested. But they're still cute.
We then took the stroller on an African safari to view some zebras.
After a hot dog/corndog break, we swung by to visit a bear.
I think my favorite animal is a giraffe. I don't know why, but I just like them. I think it's their darling little horns on top of their head.
Sadly, the lions were not in view. Hogle Zoo is in the process of building a new habitat for large cats. We were sad because one of Roo's favorite games is to pretend she's a lion. To compensate, we quickly rushed over to her favorite animal/reptile, the crocodile. We also got to see some birds, like the spoonbill, along with snakes, bats, spiders, and pinned butterflies, moths, and beetles.
Our last stop was to visit the apes. While Claire had no problems with the elephant statue and was quite eager to sit on its trunk, it took a little bit of convincing to persuade her to visit this ape statue. At first, she was quite tentative.
Even when we finally got her to sit on its lap, she wasn't too happy.
Then she grew to like the ape.
And even invited Mikey to sit down with her.
She even wanted Mikey and I to sit there together and offered to take our picture. I declined.
I haven't been to Hogle Zoo in many a year. Some things had changed quite a bit (for instance, I couldn't find any of those cool wax animal makers and apparently balloons are now dangerous to animals), but I was glad to see they still had the silhouette of the ape, so you could see how you measure up.
We took a train ride before we left the zoo, too. So that was our trip to the zoo. Although my lyrics aren't the most creative, at least they have that essential element of truth.
We're gonna have fun cuz we're going to the zoo!
Posted by kea at June 11, 2006 03:01 PM