Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Lions and Tigers and Hippo's?

This past Saturday we all went to the National Zoo with a guy Mike works with, Steve, and his wife. We met for breakfast at Bob Evans and then drove to the Metro station to go to the zoo. Cameryn and Luke LOVED riding on the metro. Cameryn looked out the window and told us every time we went under a bridge or into a tunnel and Luke just bounced around pretty much everywhere. He did keep trying to put his mouth on things (I prevented it thankfully) which resulted in me finally putting him back into the stroller cause that's just gross. He still had fun from there though.

We got off the Metro at the stop that the Metro guy had recommended we use when we bought our tickets so we wouldn't have to push the stroller uphill which was really nice but we forgot to ask him which way to go after we got off the train. We asked some girl who didn't sound too sure but we followed her advice anyways. She of course ended up being wrong. Mike asked someone else a few blocks later and she said it was the other direction and on the other side of the street. So we got some good exercise that day.

It was the perfect day to go to the Zoo. There was a nice breeze and it wasn't too hot so all the animals were out and pretty active. Except unfortunately for the Pandas. They were sleeping in the sun so I didn't get any good pictures of them. I got one picture of one of them sleeping and you can see his face but that's it (it's the first picture in the video). Plus there were two levels to go on and stupidly we went on the bottom one and no one but me wanted to go back around to the top level so that we could actually see them, oh well.

We went onto the enclosure that has all the Elephants, Hippo's and used to have Giraffes. The gave the Giraffes to another zoo because they are in the middle of building up this new area they are calling an Elephant Walk. It supposed to be done in 2011 so hopefully they'll get the giraffes back after that. They had this huge Hippo in there. The picture that I took doesn't do him justice but I only had one hand to use since I was holding Luke who was trying to get down and climb into the enclosure. He loved the animals and kept making silly noises. It was like he was trying to talk to them. Anyways, this Hippo was HUGE- Mike kept saying he had to be at least 5,000 pounds and I don't doubt it.

Cameryn loved looking at the Elephants too. Right near where they were there were all these monkeys loose in the trees. Of course they are allowed to be loose but the zoo people keep tabs on them. They were so teeny and cute. There were a lot more of them in the Small Mammals building. That was a really fun building to be in. I was watching the Meerkats and they had three of them all standing up kinda standing guard or something and the rest of them would climb around and get into this little pile (below). It was so cute. The others were standing guard so they could cuddle. When someone walked up to quickly the guards would give a signal or whatever and the little pile of Meerkats would disperse and run away to hide only to come back out again and pile together again. So cute!!

They have these cables (or something like it) that the Orangutans (I can't say that word without thinking of Monty Python, he he) climb on. I've never been able to see them climbing on them but Saturday there were three of them up there together totally showing off for the crowd. I got a video of it (below) but my hand was again a little shaky since I was only using one hand to do it so sorry if you get dizzy when you watch it.

For some reason they had the make and female lions separated which was neat for us though because they were "talking" back and forth. It was really cool to see. The tigers were also really active. There were two of them the were playing and chasing each other around. Stupidly I just sat there watching instead of getting it on the camera that was sitting there in my hand. I could even tell when it was about to happen. Anyone who has had a cat can tell when one is about to "get" the other one.

Over all it was a really nice day and the kids had so much fun at the zoo watching all the animals. Luke fell asleep in the stroller while we were walking out and stayed asleep while on the Metro. It was a busy but really wonderful day.


2 comments:

Gina said...

You got a lively bunch of animals that day! What cool footage! Liam was loving the monkeys!!! Thanks for sharing this!

Cameryn and Luke are so cute and getting so big!

Jessica said...

That was way cute. I think it's cool how kids are so amazed by animals. I'm glad that you had a good time. It looked like the perfect time of the year to go to!!