A Trip to the Zoo

Also known as “Things I was doing when I wasn’t posting here”.

You see, the thing about being on vacation means that rather than being a slave to either the job or to the blog, I can go outside on occasion and do things “in the wild”. That is, of course, when I’m not being totally hypocritical and just wasting time on my Sims games.

On Thursday we decided to take a trip to the Zoo, as the last time we had gone was the beginning of summer when it had been really crowded. The weather report was calling for snow on Friday (and they were right), but Thursday looked clear and crisp. We bundled up in a couple of lined sweaters (not knit by myself – purchased) and made our way.  I’m using Robin’s pictures from the trip, by the way.  Partially because I’m feeling lazy about downloading from my little Canon, and partly because he gets some pretty good snapshots on his cell phone (about 375 in total from the trip)

Now, usually we start with the Canadian exhibit, and wind up missing the Dinosaur Park (in which you’re just following a path through an area with dinosaur sculptures). This time, we took the extra hike.

The dino walk was great, but because the local river was at a low level for the season and fish are apparently spawning, they had closed the waterflow to the riverlike scenes. As a result, we saw a lot of half-dinosaurs where the water level would usually hide the missing pieces.  I think my comment was “If you’re going to close the pool, you might want to take the toys out.”

From there we headed into the Eurasia area where we saw all kinds of critters from monkeys and camels

To Elephants (easily our favourite animal at the zoo, and all of them were out and about rather than cooped up inside)

To big cats (Siberian Tiger)

And slightly smaller cats (Snow Leopard…Dude got his paw stuck in a chain holding a pumpkin that I gather was being used as a decoration / scratching toy. Looked painful!)

Once we had done that, we took a stroll through the Savannah and saw the Hippos out and about, the giraffes, and the Lions. The head of the tiny pride was pretty vocal that day. After waking up and giving a few good yawns, he started pacing the cage and roaring. I don’t think we’ve actually ever heard him speak before, so it was a real treat.

From the Savannah, we headed towards the Canadian section. We skipped the Tropical building, mainly because we were nice and cozy warm in our lined sweaters, and knew that once we got indoors, our glasses would fog up and we’d both start wheezing and overheating. We’d seen what was in the building last time, so we went and saw the bears and and I got to feed the ducks. One drake was assertive enough that he pushed right to the front and instead of waiting for the grain to drop on the ground, he was heading for my hand. Amazingly enough, he was very gentle with his bill.  No peckings here!

I had a little time to commune with my friends the Bison (I think they’re great animals. Some time I’ll tell you about my Extreme Bison Experience on the way to my brother’s Wedding in Yellowknife)

We also saw some sheep you can’t shear

And goats that you wish you could.

After all that (plus the muskox, the caribou, and more owls and raptors than you could shake a stick at), we headed out.  And warmed up in any urbanite’s natural habitat.

Yep. Starbucks.