Charles Paddock Zoo

We like animals. We have been members of the Louisville Zoo for three years now and we love to go look at all the animals they have there. If you have not ever had a zoo membership we can recommend it. You start saving some time during your third visit. Surely in a year you can go to the zoo more than three times! When you have a membership you could just walk in, see your favorite two animals and go. There is no pressure to “get your money’s worth” be seeing all the animals so you can spend more time with the ones you like or just stop in for a little animal fun when you are in the area. The best thing about membership is since you are spending more time with each animal when you go and you are going more often you actually get to know the animals – as individuals. You pick up the animals’ names, you recognize their unique features and you see a lot more behaviors than just sitting around. Usually, one sees a lot of sitting (or standing) around at a zoo. That doesn’t change with a membership but when you go 15 times in a year, the one or two interesting encounters on each visit add up to a lot of interesting animal experiences. The reason you are reading a glowing endorsement of zoo membership on our travel blog is because now we get to enjoy another aspect of zoo membership: Reciprocal Membership. There are about ten zoos and aquariums within easy reach of us where we get free or reduced admission with our Louisville Zoo membership.

In mid-June we went to the Charles Paddock Zoo away north in Atascadero. It’s a small zoo, covering only three blocks at the most. Our AAA tour book said it had 150 animals and we were laughing about whether that meant 150 kinds or 150 total animals. Matt started counting to make sure we saw 150 animals: 6 goats, 1 tiger, 1 owl… He eventually lost count. Whatever the actual number in their collection, they have an impressive number of species. Several of their animals are species one doesn’t usually see in zoos at all, let alone in small ones. They even had animals that we had never even heard of. The diversity for such a small place was pretty impressive. Of course, nobody had a lot of room, which is a little bit sad. [Insert lengthy discussion of conservation pros and captivity cons of zoos here.]

We saw a sleeping Indo-Chinese tiger, the fluff of an alleged two-toed sloth that was sticking over the edge of a hammock, the striped shapes of at least two porcupines tucked away in an imitation cave and the ear tufts of a serval cat. We got a much better look at the goats in the petting zoo, the maras (a kind of cavie) named Pancho and Villa, the emu, the troop of wallabys, the spider monkeys and the prehensile-tailed porcupines. We spent a lot of time watching the flamingos groom themselves. They all chattered and then two would face off with puffed-up feathers and a great racket of calls. One would back down and then they all would go back to grooming and chattering. We guessed they were establishing and enforcing social standings. As far as social behaviors among birds go, the birds of Parrot Pond were the most interesting. They had four different types on display and two of each type. They two of each type were sitting together grooming each other, totally ignoring the other types. Most animals group together with other members of their species, but it’s all the more noticeable when such bright feathers are involved.
We saw a Channel Island fox. It’s a little-bitty thing. We saw some great big toad that we can’t recall the name of. Matt’s reaction when he saw it after a few moments staring into the tank was something like, “Oh look! There he is. He’s big!” After we walked away there was another couple looking at the snakes and frogs and the guy said something like, “Oh, there it is! I didn’t even see him! I thought that was a rock!” Apparently, reactions to big toads hiding in plain sight are universal. In the aviary, we decided we needed one of our own when we have a bunch of land someday. Mandarin ducks, Inca turns, and Sulawesi ground doves are all on our list of animals we would like to keep some day.

The zoo also had three red ruffed lemurs out while we were there. We like to watch lemurs bounding around. Matt saw one come right up to the edge of the cage and reach out to grab the leaves of some nearby bamboo. Like so many primates we’ve seen in captivity we are fascinated by lemurs. They seem so familiar because they are primates. They have forward-looking eyes and hands. Real hands! We’ve seen them sitting around looking not unlike tired children. We’ve also seem then giving us considered looks. They really seem to be thinking when they look at you. That’s a look we are not used to getting from animals. On the other hand, since their lineage separated from other primates early on they are also very alien. They look even more animal-like to human eyes than do apes or monkeys. They do things that remind us of ourselves and they do other things that remind us of the animal we know best – Asher. We find many animals end up looking like rabbits to us. We recently saw an episode of Dirty Jobs where they were sheering yaks and the yaks were so shaggy, snorty, and kicky that all we saw were big rabbits.

At the zoo we also discovered a new favorite animal. Prevost’s squirrels are really neat. They are also called tricolored squirrels because they are black on top, reddish brown underneath and have white stripes on their sides. They just look so neat. Also, they have cute little rodent faces!

If you want to see all the animals that the zoo has to offer, they have a great section of their website with information and photos of all their species. It’s one of the better zoo websites we have seen.