Sunday, August 20, 2006

The "Oo" in "Zoo"

Brookfield Zoo had an ad campaign that said they put the "oo" in "zoo." We got a chance to test that for ourselves today as we visited, and I'd agree that they are full of "oos."

I think I went to this zoo once when I was a kid, but all I remember is riding the tram. Eugene was there more recently for a photography class/shoot. It's certainly too big to see all of it in one day; I think it's 16 acres.

The first exhibit we visited was a seasonal butterfly display. The majority we saw were monarchs, but it was impressive to see so many together at once. We took quite a few photos there; even though I don't have Eugene's powerful camera, I was still able to get some good shots. We looked at a few other animals--lions and tigers, the bears were later--before heading over to the dolphin show. It was only twenty minutes long, which didn't seem long enough, given that we were there half an hour before the show started. The dolphins did do some things I've haven't seen before, such as a hunting technique in which they herd fish onto land and another one where they whack fish (or beach balls) with their tails. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died during the show, but it's so hard to get good pictures of that anyway. I had to buy batteries at an inflated price afterwards.

The main food court was on the other side of the zoo, so we wandered over there, stopping along the way to look at bears, primates, and tropical animals. The food court was so-so; we wound up getting prepackaged sandwiches and salad. Afterwards, we learned there was a tapas restaurant in the food court; too bad we didn't have a chance to try it. We looked at the birds and snakes before starting to make our way back to the main gate, but along the way we tried Dipping Dots ice cream (much colder than regular ice cream, but not bad), watched swans and geese get fed, and checked out animals from Africa and Down Under. We were there for about six hours and still didn't see everything. Our feet felt like they had traversed the entire zoo, however.

I'm having trouble uploading photos again, so I'm going to try to post them to Snapfish and then link to them later.

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