San Antonio Zoo

Let's take a trip back in time, to when we were small and our parents didn't know what to do with us, so they took us to the zoo.

Okay, that never happened.

Darling and I had an amazing weekend away in San Antonio, and one of the things she wanted to do was go to the San Antonio Zoo. So Saturday morning, before our 2:30 appointment in the afternoon, we headed off to the Zoo.

I'm pretty sure he had bad ideas

Monkeys. Monkeys still smell bad, but they had a large selection of frantic little beasties that jump and ran and chased each other. I'm just glad they didn't throw poo at us. I think one of them was thinking about it, but we moved on.

We saw some bears. Bears in cages make me sad.

Darling said she liked the Fishing Cat best. I don't know what the real animal name was, but she got to see it dive into the water and snag and eat a fish. How cool is that?

I am and always have been partial to the zebras. If I could raise an equine, I'd want to raise zebras, but they are and should be running in herds in the wilds of Africa. Maybe I could raise zedonks instead.

As we walked through the zoo I have to admit I started formulating a story plot in my head. A story where there was a team of zoo hunters that had to travel through time and capture animals that were due to be killed in the wild. But they can't just capture them, because they had to be there as food for the predators, including the insects, right? So the team captures animals just before they die and bring them to the zoo. The animals live their lives out and when they die of old age they are returned (dead) to the spot where they originally would have died, plus or minus some poundage of protein to make up the difference between capture and death.

I'm not sure how to craft the rest of that story, but it amused me as I walked through the hundred degree San Antonio heat and we watched the zoo animals. We left there about noon, a bit tuckered out from walking a couple miles through the myriad zoo pathways.

Okay, now everybody look to the left...

On a Saturday morning the zoo is full of small groups with their identifying tee-shirts. I saw at least three different groups of girl scouts, wearing bright orange shirts with their troop names on them. What's the point of mentioning this? Remember that old song "Girls watch, guys watch, it happens every day…" (Okay, I hear it in my head.) In the hippo area Darling noticed another tour group viewing the people passing by the panes of glass. It isn't simply our side of the glass that is watching animals. One small group of fish was watching us.

I wonder if they do their own tours or something?

For the rest of the post I'll just add titles to the pictures. That's right! You get to look at my vacation photos! Lucky you!

Enjoy!

You could get up close to the birds, but the sign said they might bite.

Darling's favorite cat in the zoo

She watched it watch

... and emerge with a snack. Nice!

They had a butterfly house. 

I didn't know anteaters were so large. This guy was huge!

Sure, the zoo has flowers too.

In the hippo house, the hippo sleeps. Underwater.

Hippos. What you'd see in the wild...

... and what you'd get in the wild. This guy was bigger than a boat.

My zebra. That's right. He's mine. I totally call it.