Day at the zoo

Rather Calvin & Hobbes - esque pictures of Preston....













Not much to say.

Good day at the zoo seeing lots of cool animals. Braved the reptile house & stared some snakes in the eyes - though was all jumpy at everything that brushed my legs, etc. Coolest stuff was seeng a huge Komodo dragon and a beautiful jaguar all pacing the cage. Lots of fantastic things to see & burned through another set of batteries in the camera.

Had to laugh at some of the lack of knowledge with some of the people. I didn't know what a lot of the animals were, but it was funny to listen to the experts quoting what something was when I could read the sign & see that they were wrong. One mom was telling her kid that the creature in one pen was a hyena like something off the lion king & I'm reading the sign that says 'aardwolf'. Preston heard a tree kangaroo called everything from a wombat to a tree rat.

Though there was a little girl who was all jumping up & down 'cause she got to see her favorite animal - an ocelot, so that indicates at least one semi-educated child.

Sort of a sad thing though when the big cats, top of the food chain in the jungle, are reduced to being called 'pretty' by random onlookers coo-ing about the animals.

Another funny story - Preston sees this sign & start's talking about this 'special animal' called a 'Kirk's Dik-dik'. Needless to say this concerned me since I don't like showing my dik-dik in public, but yeah, it turned out to be this little deer thing....

Sorry, couldn't resist the joke.

Sometimes got to hear the parents all hyping everything up, trying to act super excited. Not sure if they were excited or if they were just pretending in order to psyche up the kids that this was 'fun'. Honestly, kids shouldn't need to be advertised to - kids should still have enough wonder in them that they should be naturally amazed about things without needing to have all the hype of advertisement. It's us grown-ups that need to be convinced or wonder (though I think hype & flash/sizzle is overrated for us, too).

Ended the day with supper at the Irish Pub (ah, it's St. Paddy's day) with yummy shepherd's pie. They were dying the river green, but yeah, it looked only slightly more of a murky green than it did normally.

Tomorrow should be a nice quiet day. Souvenir shopping & maybe catching a movie - just doing something quiet & not active so we (or at least our legs/feet) can feel a bit more rested before coming home. (which we're sort of looking forward to).