zoo-mazed

Saturday was fun. For the first time in the 5 years we've lived here, we visited the Woodland Park Zoo. It's the Seattle area's main zoo (although I think there are others). It was huge and fun and exciting! We thought Wesley would love it, and I think we were right. It's a good thing, too, since we bought a year membership! (You kinda have to, to make it worth it... admission is pricey! And the zoo is um, ginormous, so we didn't even get close to seeing everything.)

At first we saw some ho-hum things, and I found myself quoting Jurassic Park, "Um, are you planning to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour?" There was one point where all we had seen so far was the rear end of a zebra.

Then, we saw the hippos! They were sleeping. Shane actually turned to me and said, "Look, they have real hippos here." Yes Shane, I thought, it's a zoo.

It only got better after that! We were super impressed. Some of the things we saw include:

• A giraffe eating greenery off a fence with his huge black tongue
• A siamang (primate of some kind) giving another siamang a noogie
• A male lion hacking up a hairball (or maybe just coughing or chatting with his sweetie girlfriend lion, since then she started hacking, too)
• An elephant picking up dirt with his nose and then flinging it all over himself
• Two sloth-bears (yes, you read that right) being introduced by zoo staff, but not taking a liking to each other and making quite the racket to tell us about it

Wesley was a big fan of the waffle fries from the food court, animals that make sudden movements (birds and primates are good for that), and the Zoomazium, of course.

The Zoomazium is like this giant indoor kids play "interpretive" center, where the goal is to experience nature by play. There were chunky plastic "tinker toy" parts where kids could make bugs (a little over Wesley's head, but I made a bug, and the little boy next to me named Ian told me all about his bug), a giant treehouse with slides, stuffed animals, wooden "blocks" that you could build a tree with, and more. It was a fun little place! And seeing how it um, started to rain (welcome to Seattle!), we were glad to have the refuge. (And, I gotta shout-out to myself, since the company I work for did the structural engineering for Zoomazium, so we're pretty cool. Lots of arched wooden beams, baby!)


My favorite animal: the flamingo. Shane's favorite? He liked the tapirs; they are basically mini hippo-ish dudes with anteater noses. We saw one chowing down on a log. They were very social and active, sauntering around and saying "howdy" at the windows to the onlookers. Pretty funny!

My least favorite: the bug exhibit. Tarantulas and cockroaches and beetles, oh my. I can see my little boy loving it though... as he gets older. Heaven forbid.


So there's our report!! We had a wonderful and successful family outing. I loved that we all went to the zoo together, and I can't wait to do it again!