The Zoo Marathon

We used to visit the zoo one or two exhibits at a time - whatever the kids wanted, that's what we did. That was when we had year-round passes and lived in Calgary. This time - we needed to get our money's worth if we were going to pay that much for a one-time deal, so we used our 1/2 price coupons and tried to see everything we could with Heather & Jim and the kids. Riley and Kyle did pretty well. Carrying around and regularly distributing snacks made things go relatively smoothly. We made the mistake of walking past the play place at one point and lost them all in there for a few tense moments - we had a schedule to keep, or we weren't going to make it! We barely escaped with our lives as it was!


In the Canadian Wilds, we got up-close and personal with a Wood Bison. She would have been fine had we not decided to come over and have a look at her baby. She shook her head and trotted right up to us. She even tried lunging through the bars. Her threats were pretty convincing. The Burrowing Owl tried to eat Judah because, let's face it, Judah can be intrusive and annoying. We also admired the hawks, eagles, rams, skunks, elk, caribou, bears, and the chubby gophers (we laughed as they lazily lumbered around their pen - those guys had it made!).

The zebra, giraffe, and hippos were all out enjoying the sunshine. One peacock made a giraffe so mad that the giraffe charged him and stared him down. That was pretty cool. We also went into the Transalta Rain Forest, the Australia and Creatures of the Night Exhibit, and everything but Dinosaur Island (they're not alive anyway). We could find the tigers, the elephants, and we were actually able to see the ever-so-controversial rays (which no-one is allowed to pet anymore). The monkeys were fun to watch. Yup, except when they ran ahead of us or decided to march to their own tune behind. We occasionally latched them to the stroller with seatbelts so we could make it.


It was a good time had by all...