To The Zoo

I've said it once before, and I'm sure I'll say it many times to come, but the Audubon Pass = Awesome. It's so cool to be able to just wake up some random morning and go "Hmm. What shall I do today? I think I'll go to the zoo!" It also helps that the zoo is less than a mile from our house. With little planning and no special circumstances whatsoever, we took off to the Audubon Zoo.

Dustin and I had gone when we'd visited NOLA for two weeks last March. We had taken the streetcar from the French Quarter, but had underestimated the walk from the park entrance at St. Charles to the front gate of the zoo. I'm still not sure how far it is, but I am quite certain I was not wearing the appropriate footgear.

This go 'round, I was prepared, Nike's and all. The zoo was much less crowded this time (we had unwittingly gone during some sort of Fest or another before). I love the walk down the main promenade- the huge fountian with a bathing mother elephant and her offpsring, surrounded by spitting hippos. The urge to add a bottle of Palmolive is almost too much. We of course made the rounds: elephants, tigers, lions, bears, monkeys, etc. They finally opened the dinosaur exhibit, so we were very ecited to check it out. I'm afraid, though, that I had really talked Shelby into the idea that the dinosaurs were in fact alive, something that made her go from giddiness at the thought of seeing them to sheer panic once we made it through the door. Oops. After paying a couple of bucks for us all to get in, she spent most of the time in her daddy's arms, hands over her eyes, frequently squirming and screaming. The exhibit really was prety cool, though. The dinosaurs screech and move and blink and spit. It was built in a building that once housed birds, so the cages were fixed to look as though they were made for dinosaurs, some of which had gotten out (very Jurassic Park). There's an outside portion of the exhibit as well, complete with a mama triceratops and her baby. You can touch the dinosaurs (I assume, since the signs urge you to be gentle rather than keep your hands to yourself) and everytime we triedto touch the little one, it's mother would yell at us. Very neat stuff. We were also able to see the seal feeding, which was fun, but very crowded. It wouldn't have been as bad if the moms had heeded the stroller conduct guidlines and parked them in the designated area, rather than using them to take up space around them so no strangers would be within arm's reach (or, ya know, within viewing range of the show). We didn't wait around to finish the show, so we went on walking, and after seeing plenty of interesting animals, we made it to my favorite part: the Swamp. It's a recreated bayou, complete with old boat house, black bear, racoons, old rusty jalopy and alligators. Lots of 'em. They also have a little cafe, banquet room and porch elevated above the reptiles so you can eat a po-boy or dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets while watching the gators soak up some sun. After we had a little lunch, we continued our walk by the nutria (are we the only ones that call them nuture rats?) and the otters, and past the large aquariums filled with all manner of native animal, fish and crustacean (the gift shop where the baby alligators are was closed). I love this area, all of the tanks are decked out as though they were under a porch, inside a crawfish trap or some other place one might find the inhabitants locally. There's even a life-sized statue of the Swamp Monster lurching around a corner. The reast of the zoo- while beautiful and educational, is unremarkable. We fed the ducks and turtles, walked through the Amazon and madeour way back to the Haigen Daz stand. By this time they were closing, so we distracted Shelby as we skirted the carousel. Another day, dear. We ended our trip with a visit to the gift shop, where we bought a bouncey ball for Shelby and New Orleans-Opoly for us. It's pretty neat, and we've got a running game going right now (no matter what -Opoly it is, an afternoon just isn't enough).