Oakland Zoo

Paul suggested that we take Clara to the zoo this weekend so on Saturday morning I packed us a picnic lunch and we drove to Oakland to see the animals.  Clara was in heaven.  On Friday when I told her we were going to the zoo she asked "animals?"  Paul brought along his telephoto lense so he could get some close-up shots of the animals so this post has lots of pictures of some of our favorite creatures. 

 

The giraffes were Clara's favorite of the day.  There were quite a few of them and they were very active.  And we recently watched an episode of "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That" where we learned that giraffes clean their noses by using their freakishly long purple tongues.  And that their tongues are purple to avoid getting sunburnt since they are in the sun so often or something.  Clara responds to the question "what sound does a giraffe make?" by sticking her tongue out a couple of times.

Here she is with her tongue out telling Paul what a giraffe says.

It looks like Clara is pointing at the giraffes in this picture but there were actually ducks in the little pond that kept diving for food and Clara was having fits of giggles over the ducks going bottom up and she kept saying "upside down! upside down!" and then bending over to show us what she meant just in case we didn't get what she was saying.

Paul and I recently watched a documentary/news story about the ivory trade and how it is decimating the elephant population in Africa so we loved seeing this pachyderm wandering around and flaring his ears in between trunkfuls of grass.

There was a meerkat mom and dad with three meerkat babies and they were darling.  Such inquisitive little creatures and they make the cutest mewling bark.

Clara was excited to recognize that the zebras had "stripes! stripes!".  She says "stripes" way better than she says "zebra".

Trying to decide if this is a live tortoise or a fake.  (It was fake.)

Clara's other favorite part of the zoo was the goat and sheep enclosure where there were a few miniature goats wandering around.  She technically wasn't supposed to be on the rocks next to this goat (there was literally a sign right in front of it saying "Only goats and sheep on the rocks") but I helped her stand by this little goat so we could get a photo while she was petting it.  She looks a little hesitant but she really liked it and later on would run up to other goats and pet them all on her own with squeals of "goat! mehhhh!".  There were kid goats inside a little barn area that we could look at and they were the sweetest things you've ever seen.

Those are alligators behind Clara.  This is her doing her fake laugh.  I don't think she cottoned-on to the fact that the motionless scaley things in this pen were alive because those lazy buggers didn't budge an inch the whole time we were watching them.

Paul took Clara across the lily pad path.  She ended up with a shoeful of water of water on daddy's watch but didn't seem to mind much.

The gibbons were awesome.  There were two of them and they were doing crazy acrobatics all over the little island they live on. 

This is an Asian Sun Bear.  Isn't she beautiful?  And look at those claws!

It isn't a very large zoo - it only took us a couple of hours to see all of the animals and we weren't rushing around by any means.  We ate our ham sandwiches, grapes, and Sunchips at a little picnic area at the entrance of the zoo back by the flamingos before heading home.  It was a fun way to spend a lovely Saturday.