Working Vacation

We like to joke that when Brent goes somewhere for work, it is a working vacation - he works and I vacation. It looks like this one will live up to that title.

So, as I said, I can't be this close to a world class zoo without getting a zoo pass. I love animals and I love to see ones that I have never seen before. I know this story may be kind of embarrassing for me, but oh well. When I was little, I didn't pretend to be a teacher or a astronaut. I pretended to be a scientist like Diane Fosse. I would climb a tree and watch our horses for hours and hours, making note of when they took a drink or what they were doing.

It was fun for me. So, now as an adult, I still love to just watch whatever animals I can and see what they do. Because of a childhood spent watching A LOT of Nature on PBS - accompanied by my mom saying, "Do they have to show them eating the babies?" - I know a lot about animals. Anyway, before I embarrass myself more, I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time at the zoo this trip.

This is an okapi. They are a relative of the giraffe and one of the coolest animals! They weren't discovered until around 1956. Before that scientists had said that there weren't any more big mammals left to find. Guess they were wrong.

One of the main attractions at the zoo is the pandas. I read in one of my books that the zoo has to pay $1 million a year to China for the pandas. Wowie!

That just does not look comfy!

Anteaters. When I was at camp, the girls tried to teach me this game called Zoo. You sit in a circle and everyone makes up a sign to represent an animal. You do some clapping and have to do your sign then someone else's sign. Then that person does their sign and someone else's sign, etc etc. My animal was an anteater, but I could never figure out how to get my arms to do what they were suppose to do. I'm kind of coordinated-challenged. So, I get home and am telling Brent about this stupid game that I couldn't do and he says, "Oh, that's Moose Moose, we would play it all the time on my mission." Man, even he can do it!

The camel on the left found a stick and was playing with it, so the two on the right came flying over to try to play with the stick too. It reminded me of a kids. The two wanted the other one to share and he just WOULDN'T!

This baby giraffe was born about a month ago. So cute! She was over six feet tall when she was born. Wowie!

This bear reminded me of how I felt. "Man, it's hot!"

There was this really nice guy from England who was just amazed by this meerkat laying on it's back. He was so friendly and funny. I am amazed how many people from other countries there are at the zoo.

Ok, I'm going to try to not constantly post stuff from the zoo. Only REALLY cool pictures? Have a good day!