Harper's Trip to the Zoo!

[Avery Reynolds]

While I don't have a whole crapload of pictures, I just wanted to show you guys the highlight of my day at the zoo - I don't go very often and I never ever take friends so taking pictures for you all kind of made me feel like I wasn't "alone" with my sister and mom, lol. It was, in a way, like bringing friends. So I would like to show my day at the Indianapolis Zoo. ^^

Before I left the house I had to say bye to my own two favorite kitties in the whole wide world - Sundance and Midnight. By their names, I think you can figure out who's who considering their colors. They at least looked semi-awake when I told them I was going to be seeing cheetahs and lions and tigers... and bears, oh my!



And our first stop was, of course, the Cheetahs exhibit because they were doing a Cheetah Show at 10 in the morning and we wanted to see it. Sorry about the slight blurriness of the picture - it was taken through glass. But that's one of our three new cheetahs - standing on top of its favorite lookout point.



Right across from the cheetah exhibit was the elephant exhibit. My family and I stood there for about twenty minutes watching them. Some staff came out because they said they'd noticed us standing there for a while (the zoo was pretty empty because of the heat and the weatherman said storms were coming) and so they had the elephant out do some tricks for us (which were so CUTE, one of them was they had the elephant raise her trunk and a foot and wave the foot at us like she was saying 'hi'). Then they said they would bring out the youngest for us to see, and ths picture you see is of her. Her name's Zahara, and she was born in 2006. Apparently she can hold a paintbrush and she loves painting.



Further on we saw some lions. Sorry about the chainlink fence. >.> But if you look closely at the lion's mane, it looks like he has a cute hairdo that has his hair hanging out over his face. It was the most amusing thing to me at the time.



And at the end of the safari area, there's the giraffes! They've never stood this close to the viewing area before unless it's feeding time. But it isn't - my camera is zoomed out as far as it can go, and the giraffe still looks this big! They were so pretty.



Then my sister and I headed to the desert area because my mom was too tired and headed into a cafe to sit down. Another one of our recent exhibits is the meerkat exhibit, and I saw this little guy and just had to take a picture of him. HE'S SO CUTE.



Well, meerkats are cute, but then I saw these three. ... ... ... It made me think of last night when Nike, Sarah, and I were ganging up on Jimi/Rion. These three were huddled together while the other ones were all scurrying around. So I decided: it's Sarah, Nike, and I in an alternate universe plotting just how to best embarrass Uncle Jimi. xD



Pretty sleeping iguana. 'Nuff said.



This might sound snooty, but I honestly don't know if any other zoo in the world has this. At the Indianapolis Zoo, a few years ago we build an underwater dolphin dome. It's in the dolphin pavilion, and it's basically this giant glass thing where you can watch the dolphins swim around you. You can even watch shows down there (for free, I might add), and it's actually pretty cool. Sorry about the crappiness of the picture - my camera doesn't capture movement well and dolphins never stay still for long. xD



And our last stop of the day was the oceans building. Don't ask me why the polar bear is in the oceans building - for some reason they combined that and the arctic thing so yeah. >.> One of the last animals we saw before heading home.



All in all, it was a good day. ^^