Two Zoos (an annotated album)

In looking at my pictures from the Minnesota Zoo, which we visited with my childhood friend Carrie and her younger daughter Greta (dedicated readers of this blog may be glad to put faces to those names), it struck me that I did not capture many live animals (except the girls) and that you would almost think that we were at some kind of indoor playground:



(check out Clio hanging on Carrie's hood ties)


And if some alien race saw these pictures of Eleri, they might think that the zoo was a place to preserve (and gawk at) machinery, trucks and gear:



In Denver, the playground theme continued:



Though we did also look at some very live, very big animals, like Giraffes, Elands, Bison, Elephants, and Camels.

Which Eleri thought was awesome. (It took her a while to figure out that these big animals were real, I think: the first one she saw was a tiger, and instead of getting excited about the big cat, she pointed to a squirrel hopping along the very top of the tiger enclosure, and made her squirrel clucking sound with her tongue.)

Somehow, the kids seemed most taken with the common duck:

Which, I will admit, were actually quite mesmerizing in their feeding frenzy:


In the Tropical Zone, the Denver Zoo has a collection of komodo dragons, which the kids found fascinating. They just sat right down on the floor and hung out.


This one brought out the frisk in Eleri, though. Clio did a better job than Dakota of managing the hug attacks, but hey, these guys are sisters.... and Dakota has become terrified of Eleri's clutches!