Going to the Zoo

Yesterday I had the privilege of spending a day at the zoo with one of my all-time besties. I got childishly excited about it and decided to let myself spend the day squealing at cute things and taking way more pictures than necessary, in true child fashion.

I was so excited about penguins that we ended up going back to them 4 different times.

There were a bunch of other animals too.

Pygmy Hippo (weirdly, we didn't manage to spot the full-size one)

Okapi

 

Cute furry animal whose name I've forgotten (Duikus perhaps?)

Spot the bird!

Grumpy Lion

These awesome-crested birds turned out to be merely another type of pigeon

Tigers!!

Creativity credits to whoever came up with this beast's Latin name

And here's Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla in the flesh

Tiny orange frog

This monkey was sat too much in the shade to get a good pic, but his tail looked like it would make the perfect broom

As well as learning about animals, I learnt a lot about zookeepers. It turns out that zookeepers have very different ideas from the rest of us about what's important in life.

Don't you just love any animal who likes to tear the guts out of weak and sick victims?

Another zookeeper was showing us some tricks done by trained rats. 'For those of you who don't like rats, let me give you some quick facts about them that I hope will convince you to like them,' he started; and then proceeded to explain that a female rat can get pregnant at 5 weeks, give birth to 12 pups and immediately get pregnant again. I don't know about you, but that really doesn't make me like rats any better...

They also don't seem to have the best grasp of what a gorilla's natural habitat is.

Did you know gorillas invented the ice lolly?

Sadly, it turns out that there is a bit of a bird flu scare at the moment, so the aviary was closed. So was the bird pen next door...

'Bummer, we got plants and birds mixed up again.'

There were other things to look at besides the animals, like architecture and flowers and funny old pictures.

This big plastic bathtub is Grade I listed.

Yeah, I know, you can see flowers without going to the zoo...

In the old days, even the animals had to walk from the station.

There was a whole big building devoted exclusively to bugs, and I discovered a dormant interest in entomology (i.e., bugs fascinate me). I spent a full ten minutes staring at the glass-fronted enclosure of desert locusts. I've heard so much about these little guys and the destruction they can wreak on crops, destroying a community's livelihood in a matter of hours, that it was weirdly fascinating to see them within reach.

I was glad of the layer of glass between us!

In the middle of the zoo was what looked like a massive bouncy castle with a curtain entrance. On the inside, it was hot and humid, populated with exotic plants and the most massive, colourful butterflies I have ever seen.  My favourites were the Blue Morphos, about the size of my palm with brown spotted wings that opened up to reveal the most brilliant sapphire tops.

I don't think I've shown you even half of the things we saw, and in five hours we definitely didn't see everything there was to see! My favourite moment of the whole day was a little tiny girl racing back and forth along the glass side of the penguin pool, squealing with excitement as a penguin on the other side swam back and forth alongside her. Like her, I let myself be a little kid again for the day - eaten up with fascination, enthralled by the variety and newness and perfection of the creatures around me.

That's an attitude I want to take away with me, because the world is crawling, literally, with beautiful things, and maybe I don't need a zookeeper to point them out to me if I learn to look for myself....

Tell me; what wondrous thing have you seen today?