Trips and Outings – Backyard Brilliant

After I shared my best zoo tip ever, going to the zoo bright and early on the morning of daylight savings, I'm sure you knew you would find me at the zoo this past Sunday morning. This was probably our coldest trip to the zoo yet. When we arrived, the temperature was not even 30 degrees! But the sun was shining and it felt good to be outside. Due to the cold, there were a few animals we missed seeing because they were still indoors. However, that did not stop us from having a fantastic trip to the zoo! Although there were a few other families braving the cold, it felt like we had the zoo completely to ourselves! No trying to peer through the crowd to catch a glimpse of an animal, and no worries about losing track of the children when they all of a sudden bolt ahead to the next display. The aquarium is one of the kids favorite parts, they love to dash from tank to tank to see what's inside, and usually the aquarium is so packed full of people that it gets nerve-racking trying to keep an eye on the kids. Not so this time. We had the entire aquarium to ourselves except for a family of 3 that was in the gift shop most of the time. It was fabulous! I must apologize for most of my pictures, many were taken through glass, so they are not the best, but you get the idea! Some of the highlights included watching the zoo keeper feed a red panda as it stood on its hind legs like a dog. I don't think I have ever seen a red panda before. Watching the zoo keepers give a baby elephant a bath. They used positive reinforcement to keep the elephant standing still. We heard them telling the elephant to stay still, telling the elephant good job, then they would make a clicking sound with some sort of stick, and feed the baby elephant a carrot. It happened over and over doing the bath so that the elephant would stay still against the bars for its bath. We were able to see divers clean the huge fish tank. It even looked like they were scrubbing some of the rocks, not sure why. Any zoo keepers want to weigh in on that? One of the scuba divers motioned for the kids to come closer, and then he did some flips in the water. The funniest thing that happened was in the monkey house. The glass viewing area in the monkey house is shaped like a triangle, with the point facing the visitors, like this: >. Hard to visualize I know, but there is space for the kids to be under part of the glass, they can crouch down low and look into the exhibit. Well, there was a monkey perched on the glass. I had never seen this before, so the kids crouched down low to get a closer look. The monkey was on top of them through the glass. The kids thought this was so funny. Then as the kids were scooching around to get better looks, we noticed something, the little monkey followed Sullivan wherever he went. So Sullivan went right, and the monkey followed him and kept looking at him through the glass, Sullivan went left, and the monkey went left. This went on and on, it was so funny! We have never had anything like that happen before! Here is the best picture I have, but it's tough to get a decent picture with the glass. Maybe the monkey liked his red hair or his bright blue coat. That's Sullivan's feet you can see in the picture. As we neared the end of the trip, we kept hearing an animal from far away making this big sound. Was it a sea-lion? A regular lion? A rhino? We couldn't tell. Turns out it was the Tiger, just sharing her thoughts and feelings with anyone who would listen! At the end of the video I whisper to the tiger to roar again, and do you know what she does? She looks at me directly, and then gives me the snub! Just you watch. I am calling the tiger a she because this little snub is something only a woman would do! Did anyone else try the zoo on this early Sunday morning? If so, how was it? Crowd free? Best zoo trip ever? Let us know!