ZOO!!!

So, today I went and did the thing I was looking forward to the most...WENT TO THE ZOO!!! Wheeeeeee.

I stayed for about 5 hours and my feet are now KILLING me. That place is HUGE!!! Lots and lots of walking. It rained off and on, just a bit...not enough to drive people inside at all.

Anyway, I kind of, ummm...managed to take 161 pictures. Hehe. So, here's some of them...I'll try not to go TOO crazy.

Panda!!! I believe this is Mei Shang, the mommy panda :D The pandas were AWESOME!! Somehow I was surprised at how big they were, but they really were quite big! And CUTE! Soooooo cute :)



Fox! They're so cute when they haven't been flattened on the highway by a vehicle.


Gorilla! Sorry Chris...didn't see the one with the "large breasts." I tried to take a picture of the big guy in the back. It was soooo funny. He was sitting there all serious and the little one comes up and throws a handfull of straw in his face!! Hehehehe. Anyway, this one seemed like kind of the "young adult" of the group and came and was just leaning against the glass.


Elephants! The one on the right is the "baby" but he was actually born in, ummm...2001 I believe. Anyway, he's really big, but still smaller than the rest.


Panda again!!! Hehehehe. I think the most surprising thing about the pandas was the size of their enclosure. It's actually quite small.


Another panda! This is Tai Shan, the baby. He's soooo big now!! I got to watch him playing with his toy. :)


Simba!! I also tried to get a Timon picture, but the meerkat was hiding!!


Ummm, I believe this is a Gecko or whatever. Anyway, it's was such bright colours! Very pretty.


This turtle was HUGE. There were 3 of them. There's no way I could put my arms around it it was so huge.


This is a newt! The picture isn't 100% clear, but he was so tiny and cute!! I had to take a pic of him :)


Monkey!! B/c I know the boys love to see monkeys.


Ummm...PANDA!! They were so cute!!!


Oh! Here's Tai Shan playing with his toy!!


This is a listing of all the species of birds that have gone extinct. Quite a list.


Hehe, there were lots of funny signs all over the zoo. This one - there was one that warned me about 2-inch long wasps, one about animals that bite....


Bamboo!! The zoo grows all the bamboo for the pandas, so it's all over the place. Other people can grow bamboo for the zoo, but I believe the policy is that the zoo has to harvest it and it has to be all certified and stuff.


Ummm, ok. I managed to not barrage you with all my pics :P When I get a chance, I'll put up all my pics in a photo album somewhere that everyone can go see if they so choose.

The zoo was super fun. Lots of walking. Some general comments:

• Pandas!!! Man, I spent so many hours of my life watching Tai Shan on webcam...it was so nice to see him face to face. He was so cute :)
  
• I was a bit underwhelmed by all the water animals. They claimed to have a sea lion but there was no sea lion. The facilities for the water animals weren't that great...I keep remembering the aquarium in Vancouver last year, and this place just didn't even come close to measuring up to the Aquarium.
• I never saw the lemurs :( Couldn't find any.
  
• Kimodo dragons are HUGE!
• My favourite place was the small mammal house - 2nd to the Pandas of course :)
• I have discovered that shrews are incredibly cute. So, in the future, if I am ever called a shrew, I shall take it as a compliment...not that I want people to start calling me a shrew.
• I got to see a two-toed sloth. The person there said that you basically never got to see the whole sloth, usually just part of them as they hid up top. This sloth crawled all the way down the tree and took a drink and climbed back up. Very cute.

Anyway, it was a good day and now I'm exhausted!

But, I'm going swimming! Yay! I'll post more later!