Zoo Day

The Littlest Critic and I spent Sunday at the zoo and it was the perfect day.

If you really want to see the animals to their best advantage, what you want is to go to the zoo when it's overcast and a little breezy. The animals tend to be more active then – and were they ever on Sunday. The polar bear was diving and splashing repeatedly in the water, the tigers were pacing instead of sleeping as were the lions, the gorilla jumped around a lot and threw one of his toy barrels, the snow leopard looked at us with an open mouth then put her giant paws up on a tree trunk and scratched just like a big ol kitty-cat.

The cheetahs were pacing and I kept trying to get good pictures with my camera phone, but it's a bit hard as camera phones totally suck at photos.

But once, when the cheetah was nearing the fence down from us, I ran right over to the fence where it came to and snapped the picture below. The cheetah was a bit startled at my approach and hissed and growled at me, a deep throaty growl like thunder in her throat. It was awesome in that back of your neck hair standing on end way. And I was crouching only about eighteen inches away.

I fiddled with some of this, demonstrating my poor photoshopping skilz.

Meanwhile, TLC was much more interested in putting her Zoo Key into all the machines that would tell you interesting facts about the animals. She's almost always more interested in other things than the animals, like the press screen where you put your hand on a chimpanzee's handprint and it lights up a picture of a chimp. Or the playground near the Primate House. Or acorns. I had to insist that she could only take one crabapple from the tree near the parking lot. Insist, and insist, and insist once again.

You can show her enormous tigers on the prowl and she'll glance at them with minor interest – but then a squirrel crosses our path and she's all enthusiasm. It's kind of funny, and just a little irritating at times.