Zoo!

We spent a good part of yesterday at the San Francisco Zoo, enjoying all the animals -- both inside and outside the enclosures! (There were several schools' worth of field-tripping groups there, herded around by parents with that dazed "oh, God, what have I gotten into?" look... which is a green light to act up and get away with whatever you can as fast as you possibly can to any kid worth their salt. Let's just say the day was sodium rich and move on, shall we?)

We invited Matt's (wonderful and easygoing!) mom to join us, and planned on taking my minivan so there would be plenty of room for everyone, but that was before my van ended up in Shop Hell. (The transmission is out, and the shop is trying to get the warranty company to greenlight fixing it, but it's now Friday and the van has been at the shop since Tuesday morning at 8. No work has been done, and it's not looking like any will be done in the foreseeable future... and no, this shop doesn't have replacement vehicles, so we are down to one car. Sigh... ) Luckily we were able to take Mom's car for the SF trip, or we'd have been crunched into Matt's pickup like sardines in a can!

We downloaded  maps before we went, and handed one to each child so they could begin enjoying the day. Thomas loves maps, and he spent a good portion of the hour-long drive down to San Francisco poring over the paper, announcing venues as he found them: "Lion! Look, Mom, lion! Giraffe! Look, Mom, giraffe!" Megan tried to map out a route to take us to the animals she wanted to see, but it turns out they don't have pandas -- her first pick -- and we somehow missed the koalas, if they did have those.

I forgot how expensive it can be to do an outing like this... even with packing snacks and lunch, and a comp'ed parking ticket (thanks to a friend), it cost us $66 just to get in! ($6 bridge toll, $15 each adult, $9 each kid, and $12 for a senior.) We got one cotton candy and one order of fries, so there went another $10 or so... and the train was running, so we plonked down the $4 each to have a ride on THAT, of course...ka-ching, ka-ching... sigh... Blam, there went $100~! I must say, though, that we got our money's worth: we did have a great day!

I was able to get some awesome pictures of animals with my new camera, zooming right up to capture their faces. I had some sort of magic touch going, too -- the animals would look up or seem to pose perfectly just as I went to click the shot -- and I ended up with postcard-quality shots! (Double drat that I am still having technical issues with uploading them!! Rrrrr!~)

I've noticed before that several animals are not all that exciting to see... the lions and tiger just lay there, looking vaguely stuffed, sunning themselves, and other animals seemed to be hiding just out of camera range, chuckling to themselves as they presented hunched backsides (warthogs, the seal, the capybara and most of the polar bears). The really disturbing exhibit, though, is the kangaroo habitat, on the Walkabout. Never once have I seen one upright, looking like a kangaroo ought to look... instead, they are all stretched out on the slight incline, looking like some sort of massacre has happened on the grassy slope. Guyana comes to mind... do kangaroos drink Koolaid?

Luckily, several other animals were animated and fun to watch, like the bears, penguins, and giraffes. We took some video of the river otters frolicking in their little river and waterfall area (easily the best exhibit of the day!), and a funny little scene as the kids attempted to feed the animal kids in the farm animals area, and an accidental few second's worth of two turtles sunning themselves on a log. (I hadn't reset the camera, and I thought I was getting a still picture. Well, even with video, I got a still picture! LOL) The best video was taking some footage on the train, getting Thomas's reaction and then panning up to get the sensation of riding along for a few seconds. We played it over and over again once we got home, and each time the kids were delighted all over again!

The playground was our after-lunch stop, but that idea seemed to have occured to every field trip group, as well. The place was swarming with kids, hell-bent on being on every piece of equipment as fast as they could before they had to go back to filling out their "educational" booklets on animals. One group was wearing some sort of uniform -- black pants, white shirts, and burgundy blazers -- but several other groups were wearing bright red tee shirts, which surprisingly enough, was also what Thomas was wearing. A huge number of kids had also gotten their summer buzz cuts, too... just like Thomas. For the twenty  minutes we were on that playground I was frantically trying to keep up with and maintain visuals on a racing red-shirted buzz-cut boy, and constantly double checking to make sure it was the RIGHT boy! Good Lord, that "break" nearly broke me!

At the end of the day we made our way back across the zoo, stopping for one last gaze at the pink flamingos outside the Leaping Lemur Cafe. Matt had a firm grip on Thomas -- who has been known to plunge into bodies of water in a heartbeat, and whose impulse-control medication was nearing expiration -- but somehow Thomas was able to grab Nona's sunglasses off her head and fling them into the enclosure, all in the blink of an eye. We stood there in stupefied silence -- did that just happen?! -- and then Thomas let out a hoot of nervous laughter: even he was surprised by his actions!

I guess we'll just add on the price of a pair of sunglasses to the zoo trip and call it a day...