All the Smelly Animals

We went to the zoo on Monday. It wasn't a holiday, unlike Good Friday, when we last attempted a zoo visit, along with the rest of the free world.

It was a beautiful day. Sunny and just the right temperature. The animals were more active than I have ever seen them and we usually try to go to the zoo a couple of times a year.

We gave each of the girls a disposable camera for them to take pictures at the zoo. Tater Tot used most of her film on random pictures around the house. "Oh, Mommy, can I take a picture of the light fixture?!?"

Small Fry took lots of pictures of the first three animals that we saw, despite warnings that the film was limited. Poor kid, she was thinking of Mommy's digital camera that has room for 400 some-odd pictures. She had 27. Life really isn't fair, is it? Everything was okay after I promised to share some of my pictures. I am sooooooo nice.

Here's some of what we saw:


A red wolf. As many times as we have been to the zoo, we have never seen this wolf. It has always been safely hidden in the foliage at the back of the exhibit. The girls were so excited to see it come walking right up towards us.


Here is one of the coyotes that put on quite a show for us! As we were standing there discussing that these coyotes were so much smaller than their brethren that we see around town they started howling and yipping. I could not believe just how loud they were. It was painful and yet, I couldn't walk away. It was a haunting sound and had such a rhythm to it.


Here is the poor jaguar that is forced to live next door to the coyotes. The jaguar was, frankly, not as enthralled with the coyote song as the rest of us. Probably because he has to listen tot he show several times a day (and most likely, night too!). As the coyotes were reaching a peak in their music the jaguar charged the fence in between them and roared. We all jumped, including the coyotes. They quieted down and the poor jaguar marched to the other end of its enclosure and started pacing.

And here is the parakeet that we fed. Actually we fed quite a few of them. They are in an aviary and you can buy seed sticks and the birds will fly down and perch on the sticks to eat the seed. It was so much fun! The buzz kill was the people that insisted on elbowing in to get at the birds and trying to "steal" birds from other peoples sticks. Sheesh!

Much to your relief I did not take a picture of the single most interesting thing we saw. The boa constrictor in the herpetarium having his breakfast. Mmmmmm, yummy.