Sunday, September 13, 2009

Night at the zoo

Dima and I went to the Elmwood Park Zoo's Zoo Snooze last night and had a very nice time. We were there with good friends who had done the whole thing before. dima likes anything to do with water and was interested in the water in the enclosures as well as the creek beside the zoo. The staff was attentive and knowledgeable about the animals, their program kept us busy - the time from 6:00pm to 10:00pm - just flew! We set up our "camp", ate our dinners from Panera Bread, got to see live animals up close, the kids made "turkeys" out of papier-mache to feed to the cougars this morning, had a tour of the nocturnal animals' cages and had s'mores by the camp fire... at that point the rain that was drizzle earlier really started coming down pretty fast. They had planned to show the movie "Madagascar" but since the rain picked up the staff decided to skip that. I thought it was just as well since it was getting late and they told us that they'd get us up at 7am. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, apparently not everyone thought so... a tent not too far from ours let their kids stay up and talk loudly for quite a while and the moms in the same tent were also awake til midnight + not being quiet about it we could hear them shuffling cards! and laughing after every sentence - just great - I used the time to research the local geocaches I had loaded on my GPS and Dima was asleep pretty quickly so I just waited them out.

This morning we packed up our stuff - it's amazing how much you need for just one night! Took our camping gear to our cars and then had time to eat - more Panera Bread food - and then explore the parts of the zoo we missed in the dark. They fed their bid cats turkeys like the ones our kids made - the lady helping us last night said the ones the kids make usually take days to dry - the "enrichment project" (enrichment for the kids? or the animals? I think both) was made in a room with the floors covered in plastic and glopped with goo by the time we left, a few kids had to work together to put the plaster stuff on the paper strips and smooth it over big balloons. They explained that the stuff we were using will just be eaten and digested by the animals who are lucky enough to get them. They also said that sometimes they fill them with food and other times they don't to keep the animals interested. This morning they were NOT filled and the obviously well- fed cougars just kind of played with one of them once they were released into the area where the turkeys had been placed.

It's a neat zoo and I'd like to to the whole thing again - maybe place our tent apart from others who might yak into the night - and if Josh goes along we'll have to cause he'll be the yakker... his lips tend to go from the moment he gets up til he goes back to sleep at night.

http://elmwoodparkzoo.org/visit/groupevents/snooze.html

After we left the zoo we tried to find a few caches and found a pretty cool sculpture garden with large wooden animals that Dima really liked since it had a creek running through it, again we went to a place that we wouldn't have seen if not for caching:

http://www.geocaching.com/map/default.aspx?lat=40.12828&lng=-75.31203

At this point I'm exhausted even though I had a quick nap this afternoon!

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