Zoo Animal Antics

I took Kamele to the zoo one day last week while the older girls were at school. She has recently been fascinated with a book called Happy Birthday to Whooo? which has many pages that look like birth announcements for baby animals. Each page has a few facts about a newborn on it and you flip the page to see the baby animal being described. I thought she would enjoy a trip to the zoo after reading this book so many times.
 Each time we read through the book I always have to laugh at this page. A mother whale nursing her baby often enough for it gain 200 pounds each day sounds completely exhausting!!


An equally exhausting prospect...giving birth to up to 200 babies at once!
 As we read how the daddy seahorse is the one who gives birth to the babies, Rebekah kept asking me where the mommy was. She wasn't satisfied with my explanation that the moms do not have a large role in taking care of the young seahorses and decided that the mommies must all be out shopping.


 Rebekah convinced me to let her sit on my lap as we put a quarter into the foot massage machine. It was terrible! She was laughing the whole time, but we were bounced around so much that there certainly was not anything relaxing, rejuvenating, or reviving about it as the sticker on the machine suggests.


Our day at the zoo was very nice though, and I wasn't going to make a post about it, but then as we looked through all our pics from the day I realized we had caught some of the animals being very sweet, and for others we had caught them when they weren't on their best behavior...
 One of the first animals we saw was this cute little chipmunk. He was just hanging out right off to the side of the path and I rushed to grab the camera because Emma loves chipmunks. I was surprised that this little guy just sat there watching us as I fumbled around with the camera bag.


 As soon as I got the camera out, he ducked under the leaves playing peek a boo.


 I don't think there is anything unusual about this behavior, but Rebekah loved how this seal kept swimming by on its back.


 And this little cutie swam right up to the window to say hi! Kamele was trying to kiss the glass.


 These bears would not stop wrestling in the water. They kept dunking each other and clawing at each others necks and faces. Rebekah was concerned so I explained that sometimes bears and other animals play like this and that they weren't trying to hurt each other.


 Rebekah suggested that maybe they were getting married. A cute interpretation of animal behavior for a 3 year old, but the funnier thing is that later when I showed the pictures to Alyssa she said the same exact thing!


 This dall sheep kept sharpening his horns on the tree branch. Then he would jump down and back away from that wooden box around the tree trunk. He would take a running start and head butt the box, seemingly as hard as he could. We watched him do this about 4 or 5 times, poor confused guy!


 This sweet baby camel that we saw when he was just about 3 weeks old back in March...


 was trying to climb up his mother's back. She seemed to be trying to take a nap on the ground, and the baby seemed to want to nap on her back. It looked very awkward and uncomfortable.


 The highlight of the day for Rebekah was seeing the flamingos!


 What started out as a nice conversation between these two quickly soured...


 They became really noisy and aggressive with each other. The way the one on the right has it's neck completely recoiled just about describes the entire interaction. A third flamingo quickly got involved. And I thought flamingos were just pretty and pink.


 




















Rebekah loved running around the butterfly garden. We can't wait to bring Alyssa and Emma here over the summer. The butterfly garden is a recent addition {and it's still pretty tiny too, but nice}.


 At least there are some standards by which my baby is still considered miniature :-)