Sunday, June 17, 2018

Three grands at the zoo

Thursday, June 14:  Today was the perfect zoo afternoon. I picked up Brendan after work and then we went over to pick up Kaity-Girl. We were surprised, but Matthew said he wanted to come too! 
 We've tried, on a number of occasions, to see Wiley the Red Panda--but usually, he is asleep, rolled up into a ball in a corner of his habitat. TODAY, we actually got to see Wiley awake and walking around--at least briefly!
I was super excited about it! He was a tiny bit elusive inthat he would peak his head out of his little door, come out for a tiny walk, and then high-tail it right back into his house. But at least we got to SEE him today!
Wiley has a nice habitat and we enjoyed watching him for quite awhile. 

 We then wandered over to the tigers to see what we could see. There are now THREE tigers at the zoo: a pair of brothers, plus a female. Nothing much was happening up at the top of the habitat so we walked down to the water area hoping we might see a tiger taking a swim ...
However, the tiger was not one bit interested in a swim this afternoon! 

 Just below the tiger habitat are the camels:  Sassie, Ella and Olive (Ollie for short). Since it was the end of the day, Ella and Ollie were too tired to take any riders--so poor Sassie had to take THREE kiddos at once!
Matt was a little bumbed because he was hoping to have a camel all to himself ... but he did very well riding with the little kids (Brendan adores him).






We checked out the snow leopard, who would not allow herself to be photographed ... and next door, we found this gorgeous mountain lion. Kaity was the one who located her at the very edge of her cage.
 Isn't she beautiful?
But I think our one MAIN delight of the afternoon was Mrs. Grizzley. Look at these pictures! I took TOO many of her, but she was completely posing for our cameras and she seemed to love the attention.
I would faint in real life if I was ever out in the wild and met up with one of these massive creatures. 
But behind a thick-paned window, we were all pretty brave. 
 We were hoping she would come close and pay us a visit ...
 She did better than that! She came and TOOK A BATH!!
 I about went crazy!


 I think the children were more entertained by ME than by HER!


 Brendan and KT found a "bear cave" of their own to hang out in.
 Matthew joined them!


 I did not get many pictures of the river otters, but they were swimming around like crazy.
 Dear, dear Kaity was SO pleased to be with Brendan today.
 Here we are visiting the penguins and the acquarium.
 Check out these expressions by Brendan ...

 Beautiful eagle couple ...
We went around and checked out the Wallabies and the parrots--Bali was not very talkative today, and the ring-tailed monkeys were quite sedate as well. So these guys did monkeys for me instead ...



We went to McDonald's for a quick dinner afterwards. We had Happy Meals and double cheeseburgers. Kaity and Brendan sat at one of those high tables, just the two of them. Listen to Kaity: "Grandma! I'm sitting at a table with Brendan at McDonald's! Just the TWO of us! This is SO AWESOME!" What a sweetheart you are, Kaity.


No comments: