We returned to town on a Saturday, picked Asher up on a Sunday and then went to the zoo on Monday. The day we went it was near perfect weather. Not neat-perfect-for-Phoenix either, it was sunny and in the high seventies. That’s near perfect for anywhere! The zoo is located inside Papago Park, with is a fairly large bit of land. The park contains a golf course (there are, for some reason, a whole lot of golf courses out here), a desert botanical garden and a few very large outcrops of sandstone that look like piles of jumbled boulders. One of these outcrops has a natural hole in it called Hole-in-the-Rock. The Hohokam Indians marked the stone near this hole and tracked the seasonal movement of the sun. We didn’t go see any of this stuff (at least not yet) we’re just setting the context.
The first area we visited in the zoo was the Arizona Trail where many animals native to the area are on display. We saw the pronghorn. It’s not a “pronghorn sheep” as we have sometimes heard. Apparently, science can’t determine if it’s a kind of sheep or a kind of antelope so better to just call it a pronghorn. One of the really nice things about this zoo is that the enclosures are huge. We saw this again and again. There is an enclosure for bighorn sheep (actually sheep) off behind the pronghorns and it was large enough to contain one of those pockmarked mountains of sandstone. No fiberglass simulated mountain terrain, this was a mountain!
Along the Trail we also saw collared peccaries. The peccary (also know as a javelina) is the only native pig-like animal in the US. We had no idea such an animal even existed. There were supposed to be Mexican wolves and coyotes too. Unfortunately the wolves were off exhibit and the coyotes were hiding. Matt says he saw a coyote for a moment but there were no confirmed sightings. This area also had a bald eagle, a mountain lion, a bobcat, prairie dogs, burrowing owls, a roadrunner, various lizards and parrots.
After passing the absolutely huge African savanna area with free roaming cattle, giraffes and gazelles we looked briefly at a number of “standard” zoo-a-mals such as lions, warthogs, a tiger, a camel and rhinos before we found animals neither of us had ever seen in real life before: mandrills. Wow. They all have the characteristic bald, oddly-shaped back side but the big male has that uniquely coloured face! It’s hard to see it in the picture, but the legs on that guy looked so human. Not the feet or the hip, but the legs themselves. It’s always a little eerie to look at other primates. 
On past this we saw a few Grevy’s zebra (Equus grevyi). It’s the largest kind of zebra and is actually quite close genetically to a horse. Rather than the flat grasslands home to the stereotypical zebra, Grevy’s zebra is native to the higher and rockier terrain of Kenya and Ethiopia. This was the zebra known to and used by the Romans, but it passed out of all knowledge in Europe and was only later rediscovered. It was named for Jules Grévy, a French president in the 1880s who received one as a gift from Abyssinia. In the wild the Grevy’s zebra eats coarse grasses and the leaves and bark of shrubs. The zoo says they feed their zebra on alfalfa and other hey but the ones we saw were definitely eating the dry leaves and bracken collected in the corner of their enclosure.
Another new animal for us was the king vulture of Central and South America. It’s a large bird and very strikingly coloured. The bright orange caruncle on its beak is particularly striking. 
As the name suggests, it’s the largest of New World’s vultures. According to the signage next to the cage, other carrion-feeders have been observed waiting around for the king vultures to arrive and rip open the “packaging” on their meal. Presumably, this is because they are the biggest and strongest. It even shows up in Aztec writing, particularly as the sign for the sixteenth day of the month: cozcacuauhtli.
The whole of the South American animals exhibit was interesting. Called the Forest of Uco, you enter a looping trail from a simulated village spread across the main path. Behind the simulated shops with Spanish signage you reach the animals, convincingly arranged in their various habitats as if you really were coming upon them as you wondered through the jungle. With shade provided by bamboo and other plants you can almost forget that you are really still in the Southwest. The center of the area is for the Andean bears. They have a really innovative habitat and apparently, the animals never get board. There are several places to look in on the bears as you wander though the “jungle.” Parrots, various fish and a few other things are part of the circuit. Making the zoo a great home for the animals and just letting you peek in at that occasionally seems to be the goal of the Phoenix Zoo. The animals aren’t always on full display, they are at home and you get to catch a glimpse. It’s a focus we haven’t seen before.Shortly after Uco we saw a tortoise that was really trying its hardest to escape. It had one foot outside and was straining with all its might to pull its shell through the bars. Of course, it had no chance of getting through. None at all. Though, it was managing to lift the whole of the fence up off the ground an inch or two. Perhaps if several of the tortoises worked together…
The coolness of the day; the copious shade; the authentic-looking, spacious habitats and the variety and uniqueness of the animals all combined to make this one of the best zoo-going experiences we have ever had.
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