Zoo

Have you been to the zoo recently?  I think I went once to the San Diego Zoo with my Junior Girl Scout troop in elementary school.  If you, like me, have forgotten the awesomeness that is the zoo, I highly recommend that you take a refresher course. 

Salt Lake may not have everything I'd like in a city, but the Hogle Zoo is--in a word--freaking-awesome-fantastic!  (I couldn't choose just one, so I strung a whole bunch of them together.  Pretty proud of myself for that solution.)  Dale and I had been intending to go to the zoo for an afternoon ever since we moved up to Salt Lake a year or so ago.  We finally got the gumption to do it when one of our friends from BYU invited us to their son's 1st birthday party there.  After the party, Dale and I broke off and saw EVERYTHING the place had to offer. 

I loved the groupings of "wild" animals that looked a lot like common household pets, including:

A sand cat, ie: fluffy kitten,

A wolf, ie. "sleeping puppy,"



And rock cavy, ie "wild guinea pig." (these were pretty sweet, though.  They mate for life.)



We also saw reptiles

I was, seriously THAT far away from that thing.  A real crocodle, just waiting with it's mouth open, as if a bird would just fly between his jaws and he could catch a lunch real quick.  It was TOTALLY real.  I could see it's tounge move as it breathed.

Yet again, THAT far away.  There were 4 tigers that we saw, but this one was pacing at the edge of it's territory, warning all of us onlookers that we weren't to cross the chain-link fense!

Girraffes are always cool too.  In real life, their knecks are SO WEIRD!! WAY skinny, and they actually have antlers!  Little nubby, furry ones!

But I must say, my favorite was the large primate exhibit.  I had gone through the small primate/reptile/mammal/amphibian exhibit with EXACTLY what feels like child-like glee!  I was absolutely IN LOVE with every new creature I met, unless I was severely disturbed by the creepy ones, and therefore bizzarely drawn to stare (bats, snakes, turantulas, etc).  Dale loved how I ran from glass to glass, staring at the creatures inside.  Each one was absolutely amazing.

This guy was the dad of a little orangutang family.  When he walked he looked like a sasquach!  There was a mom and a little daughter too, and it was totally gross, but the daughter kept throwing up and playing with it until the mother would take the piles of canvass laying around the exhibit and whipe up her mess.  It was comically humanesque!

The one that Dale couldn't wat to see was the apes, and we got to spend the most time there.  This fellow is a large silver back ape and he is SO SMART!!!  His movements were so human, and when he grabbed that orange ball, he leaned back on his knees and his eyes had THOUGHTS in them!   With others, the tiger and giraffe, etc, their eyes had instinct in them, but not intelligent thought.  This fellow sat back on his haunches and looked absolutely bored.  He made eye contact with the people behind the glass (us), as if to say "Seriously, guys?  This is what you do for fun?"  He then looked around his room and the lady next to me spoke his thoughts alloud "I really need to paint that wall."  It was AWESOME.