On Saturday, June 8, we went to the DC zoo as a family after breakfast at the hotel. The zoo is a lot of walking, so we opted to take the stroller and let Ryan walk some of the time and ride some of the time.
Based on where we parked, the first thing we saw were the orangutans. That was a great way to start as the boys said that this was by far their favorite part of the entire visit.
Two different orangutans came out of their stone house and climbed up this blue 'tower' (for lack of better word) to get on these cables that are way up high and go across the zoo.
The minute they started climbing, a zoo worker told everyone to get off the markings on the pavement underneath these lines. I gasped and asked if they ever fall. She said no, that they have hands as feet as well so they are firmly on the ropes. I wondered why everyone had to move and quickly found out. A man stood to close to the area, and the orangutan pooped in his direction, and it splatted extremely close to him. The woman explained that when the orangutans poop on the watchers, they get such a big reaction (even at this 'show' people shrieked and laughed and made a big ruckus) that they try to get people now. They will literally try to hit the people below with their feces, so the zoo has marked off the path that people should stay off it (if they don't want hit) beneath these animals.
Here was Caleb, looking at the description of the "O-Line." The boys laughed and laughed at all the talk on poop. They thought the orangutans were hysterical.
Next we headed up to the cat area, and stopped at the dinosaur fossil on the way.
We saw the lion, who was out and about.
Then we saw the tiger, who was walking pretty close to where we were (although fenced in, of course).
We made sure even little Ryan could see the tiger - it was right in front of him in this viewing window.
Near the window, there was this electronic game about where animals live that the boys played.
I took a picture of them in front of a dinosaur sculpture.
Then we headed to the 'farm' area - somewhere we didn't explore in the past (since we have farms near us). But, we know that Ryan loves farm animals and this trip was for his birthday. So, we made it a must do on this trip.
Here are the kids checking out the fish. There were so many!
And then they went to see the pigs. Ryan was very excited to see them, and he snorted and oinked at them.
Next, we checked out the cows - MOOOO!!!
Joshua read all the details on cows that they have there for kids. It's so neat that he can read the things for himself now!
I loved the picture of the boys below, with the older boys looking at Ryan as he was interacting with the cow.
Ryan also checked out the donkey and met a new "friend" in an older person who was enthralled with our little buddy and all his chatting.
As we walked out of there, we passed this guy in his habitat (above). Joshua said that they live near Florida, he thinks.
The boys would actually stand in front of or on top of things and ask me to get their picture. Of course I had to say yes!
We saw another type of monkeys in a different area, which is what the boys were checking out:
You can see the monkey behind me in the picture below:
And here's another monkey! Doesn't the picture below just deserve a caption? I cracked up when I took it!
The boys asked for their picture in front of the elephant sculpture. We were headed to see them next!
Caleb wanted one of him by himself there, too.
Here were the elephants:
There were two different ones.
The last couple times, the elephant exhibit/house wasn't open yet as they were constructing it. Now it's open and pretty neat to go into. This tire below is a "toy" for an elephant and weighs 750 pounds. It allows you to push as hard as you can and it will tell you how many pounds of force you're exerting. Joshua made 25 lbs! I made a little more than double that. No way either one of us were going to move a tire like that!
We continued to walk and take pictures of just a couple of the animals we saw. Before we stopped at the potty, we saw a deer in the field (not one of the exhibits - just an animal that came there to eat and was close to the people.
Next we saw the seals and sea lions. They weren't out the last several times we were there, so this was another 'first' for us.
They were really swimming and playing!
Ryan got to see, too! He had been walking but we put him back in the stroller at this point.
Before we left the cave, we got a picture of the two of us. We asked the boys if they wanted to go to another section on the far end of the zoo, but they were all tired by this point and didn't want to walk anymore. So, we decided to save it for another time. It had been a fun day, and I think Ryan really enjoyed it! Happy birthday, our little Schnook!
No comments:
Post a Comment