Friday, March 16, 2012

Houston Zoo

Carolyn and I went to the zoo yesterday.

Before we went, I checked the website which said that since it's the Houston school district's spring break, we should print out a traffic and parking map before going to the zoo.

I thought, "Oh, really, how bad can be it?"

What I'd forgotten is that there are approximately 942 gajillion (yes, that's gajillion with a G-A) school kids in Houston.

At least half of them and seventeen of their younger siblings also wanted to go to the zoo.

Good grief, but it was a bloody mess.

It took over an hour to find parking and thirty minutes to get to the front gates.

The crowds were so thick, we could barely move through with the stroller.

I guess it didn't really matter since Carolyn was less interested in the animals and more interested in all of the Spanish speaking families that were there.

The elephants made my day - by some miracle, we were able to get a spot right on the fence right as several of the elephants got in the water and several more meandered over to stand about five feet away from us.

I lurve elephants (I'm not going to lie, I was personally hurt when I lived in Zimbabwe and found out what pests they are - like ground squirrels...that weigh two tons and trample stuff...like people and houses).

Here's what the whole thing looked like:






This is pretty much how Carolyn felt:



I said, "Carolyn, look at the elephants!" and she said, "Lo lo!  Lo lo!"

Because apparently that's how she says "elephant".

Then she went back to trying to steal the little Mexican kids' disposable Fuji cameras.

Isn't she so cute standing next to the cheetah with her friend (while wearing her sweet gangster shorts)?



I'm pretty sure Carolyn's favorite part of the entire place was the little petting zoo chuck full of goats.

She cornered this one and sat in the dirt next to it for a good ten minutes saying, "Doggy!  Doggy!" and panting madly:



She thought pretty much everything at the zoo was a dog.  

Until I told her about giraffes and then she started calling everything "faffs".



2 comments:

Becky said...

Giraffes are the Steve Urkel of the animal kingdom. You captured it perfectly and I totally want a print of that poor, sweet giraffe pic for my wall!

Clarissa Grover said...

I think I remember learning some interesting trivia about elephants from our boat captain while tooling around Lake Victoria... but out of decency, I won't repeat it here.