Yesterday I took my daughter to the Akron zoo, our first zoo trip of 2008. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos to show, because I left our camera at home.

In some cases I was quite shocked at what she was, or was not, interested in. Other times, I completely understood.

The first animals we saw were Humboldt penguins. The last time we went to the Akron zoo, and when we went to the Boston aquarium, her favorites were the penguins. But not this time. She watched them for a bit, but was quickly eager to get going.

Next we saw some Ring-tailed lemurs and another type of lemur (I forget what type they were; possibly Black-and-white Ruffed lemurs). They were quite active, jumping around the “rocks” and climbing on the “vines.” Kelly loved them, although she thought they were monkeys.

We saw some Snow Leopards next. When she saw them she started meowing, which was cute, but other than that she didn’t seem all that interested. The leopard seemed interested in her though. He came over to the window and sat down right in front of her. He pushed his back up to the glass and turned his head around to look at her. Still, it didn’t get much interest from Kelly.

I thought she would like to see the lions and the sun bears, but she didn’t really seem to care that much. She is very vocal about lions and bears at home, so I thought she would be more interested, but she wasn’t. I can sort of understand regarding the lion because he was just laying there (though he did yawn a couple times), but the bears were pacing the cage right in front of the glass, but Kelly found the other little girl watching the bears more interesting.

After lunch we stopped by the White-naped Crane exhibit. I’m actually a bit surprised that the zoo allows the birds such close access to the visitors and vice versa. If I were a keeper, I’d be concerned about people feeding them stuff, and (being the insanely overprotective mom that I am) I’m pretty sure that if one of the cranes had wanted too, s/he could have reached over and pecked Kelly’s eyes out. Instead it just looked at us and made a few calls. It was a very interesting animal. So prehistoric looking. It was, in all actuality, quite nice to be able to get so close. You could make out such amazing detail around the eyes and beak.

Next were the Galapagos tortoises. They are, in my opinion, one of the most boring creatures at a zoo because they generally don’t do anything but sit there. But Kelly really liked watching them, I’m guessing because they were eating and not just sitting there looking like big rocks. After a few minutes of watching them crop the spring grass, I tried to leave, but Kelly was determined to stay. I kept asking her if she was ready to go, but she wasn’t. I bet we stood there for a good five minutes before she was ready.

The last animals we saw were the Chilean Flamingos. In general, I’ve always been one to pass by the flamingo exhibit. They never seem to be too exciting to watch, but I knew Kelly would appreciate them, if only because of her fascination with birds. I was completely wrong about them being uninteresting to watch. Not only was Kelly enthralled by them, so was I. The reason: mating season. They were displaying almost every (if not every) aspect of their courtship right in front of us. First they did some ‘head flagging,’ quickly turning their heads from side to side with their necks stretched high. Then a few did a bit of ‘wing saluting,’ spreading their wings for a few seconds. After standing there for a little bit, (they may have been ‘twist preening’ at the time and I just didn’t notice because I’m guessing it’s the most subtle part of their courtship) they started ‘marching,’ all running in one direction. I would, however, like to suggest the renaming of their ‘marching’ to ’stampeding’ because quite a few juvenile birds had to run for their lives. That and the fact that they decided to come straight towards the two of us before veering off suddenly.

All in all, it was a great trip. It was nice to get out of the house on a nice spring day and I loved being able to re-introduce my daughter to the wonders of the zoo.

_________________

P.S. We did see many other animals, I just didn’t write about all of them.

Leave a Reply