The day after Christmas Maya’s mom and sister left here headed to California to see the family out there. It was nice to have the apartment all to ourselves. We like guests, but we like our space too. It was a fairly uneventful few days. Maya was originally not scheduled to work on New Year’s Eve or on New Year’s Day. It’s not that we planned to do anything special, it’s just nice to occasionally have a holiday off. Maya has worked more holidays than she hasn’t since we started traveling. It kinda grinds you down to have no special days in your life. Well, it didn’t work out that she had them off. She traded her New Year’s Day shift with another nurse who was going to have family of her own in town that day. Then on New Year’s Eve morning she got a call from the hospital asking if she could come in because some of their regular staff had skipped out. Jerks! She hadn’t been prepared to go in at all. There were no clothes laid out, no lunch already packed, plus we had stayed up reading until 02:00! Yet she said “yes” and so off she went. So, from two holidays off to neither off. That’s the way it goes sometimes…
On the evening of the first, Maya’s family returned from California. They were going to say with us a few more days before heading home. On the second we went to the
Phoenix Zoo. We had liked it so much when went before, that we thought they would enjoy it too. They did. We all did. Ah, animals!
For some reason a lot of animals were off display. The anteaters weren’t in their cage. The Pronghorns were nowhere to be seen. The bald eagle was off display this time. The Mexican wolf
was there, but was hiding. The whole Forest of Uco feature was closed because one of the bears was sick. Since it’s got that innovative you-can-walk-completely-around-it design they had to close off the whole forest to give the bear its restorative peace and quiet. Too bad, that was one of our favorite things!
We did get a good look at the prairie dogs. They were all out cooing in the sun, but there was one very close to the edge of their enclosure that was digging. He was really going at it. Dirt was flying! Then, every once in a while he would stop and peep his dirty head out and look around before he went back to it. We also had a couple close encounters with humming birds. These aren’t zoo-a-mals, they are just native humming birds. One came close to attacking us over by the coyote cage. You know how loud it is when a bumblebee dive bombs right by you? This was like that but even louder. It flew right past Maya’s mom. Zzrrrruuummm! Later by the cheetahs we saw another humming bird feeding. It’s pretty amazing to see now they move from flower to flower hovering like they do. Wow.
Neha saw that there were camel rides and she wanted to take one. It’s a pretty silly little figure eight that the zoo folks take the camel on, but it was popular enough that there was a line. A
short line, but still a line. She had a fun. Something to tell the neighbors back home. That’s the zoo. Seeing it again we can be a little more objective about it and we slightly down-grade it from “The Best Ever” to “Really Great.” It may still be the best zoo we’ve seen, but we can see now that there could be zoos better. Where? We’ll let you know when we visit them.
On the evening of the first, Maya’s family returned from California. They were going to say with us a few more days before heading home. On the second we went to the Phoenix Zoo. We had liked it so much when went before, that we thought they would enjoy it too. They did. We all did. Ah, animals!
For some reason a lot of animals were off display. The anteaters weren’t in their cage. The Pronghorns were nowhere to be seen. The bald eagle was off display this time. The Mexican wolf was there, but was hiding. The whole Forest of Uco feature was closed because one of the bears was sick. Since it’s got that innovative you-can-walk-completely-around-it design they had to close off the whole forest to give the bear its restorative peace and quiet. Too bad, that was one of our favorite things! 
We did get a good look at the prairie dogs. They were all out cooing in the sun, but there was one very close to the edge of their enclosure that was digging. He was really going at it. Dirt was flying! Then, every once in a while he would stop and peep his dirty head out and look around before he went back to it. We also had a couple close encounters with humming birds. These aren’t zoo-a-mals, they are just native humming birds. One came close to attacking us over by the coyote cage. You know how loud it is when a bumblebee dive bombs right by you? This was like that but even louder. It flew right past Maya’s mom. Zzrrrruuummm! Later by the cheetahs we saw another humming bird feeding. It’s pretty amazing to see now they move from flower to flower hovering like they do. Wow.
Neha saw that there were camel rides and she wanted to take one. It’s a pretty silly little figure eight that the zoo folks take the camel on, but it was popular enough that there was a line. A short line, but still a line. She had a fun. Something to tell the neighbors back home. That’s the zoo. Seeing it again we can be a little more objective about it and we slightly down-grade it from “The Best Ever” to “Really Great.” It may still be the best zoo we’ve seen, but we can see now that there could be zoos better. Where? We’ll let you know when we visit them.
1 comment:
Sounds so fun!! I wish it was warm enough here to take the kids to the zoo.
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