Zoo!

Greydon loves animals, he has some favorites. So we were excited today to take him to the Hogle Zoo. It was a fun, successful day, but there were some funny/ironic points too that you just have to chuckle and go along with.

He was interested in the animals, but I don't think he realized that having the real thing in front of you is a little different than looking at pictures in a cool book. He would watch them, name them, say hello and goodbye to them but never really had the WOW, mouth dropping reactions I was anticipating.

The first one we went to were the elephants.. he watched them, and was then ready to move along... we were a little surprised... the baby elephant playing with her ball was cute, he was more excited by the cool big red ball....

After the elephants we moved onto the rhinos.. he loves his baby rhino stuffed animal, so I thought the rhino was going to be the big WOW moment, he was mildly interested... he kept pointing to the rhinos... well to be more specific he kept pointing to the pictures of the rhino that was on the sign to their enclosure... which was of course right in front of the actual live rhino that was standing right there looking at us.... but the sign was the star of that show... until the rhino walked away from us and I said quietly, "Look Greydon, a rhino butt." Of course, top of his voice "RHINO BUTT RHINO BUTT RHINO BUTT!" He called the next few animals Rhinos.

The first monkeys were sleeping, but the spider monkeys were putting on a show, he chose to point out the empty monkey enclosure next door and said something that included the word "Daddy". I just kept on walkin'.....

After a few more animals we got to the tiger enclosure, another potential wow moment... they were all asleep, Greydon told us "Tiger sleeping shhh" It was pretty dang cute...

The Giraffes were awesome. The way the walkways worked we were able to stand up by their heads where they were eating. It was quiet and special. I have been by a giraffe before, but never less than a foot away from one's head for so long. Greydon just stared with us. Until the group of screaming children kind scared them away... I was tempted to toss them into the enclosure...

The gorilla was curled up in a corner, and later wrapped himself in a sheet. Greydon loved saying the word Gorilla. Right about the time we were ready to give up on the Gorilla doing much his keeper walked out and chatted to us about his sheet, apparently he loves to burrito himself into it all the time. As the keeper walked around the other side of the enclosure the Gorilla heard his friend and walked over to the other side of the enclosure... impressive to say the least. We were right next to him for a minute. Greydon loved saying Gorilla and did great naming all of the animals.. except for the Orangutans... he kept calling them Gorillas.. hopefully they weren't too offended.

Greydon liked the animal carousel so we were excited to move on to the train.. the little tiny train, the tiny little munchkin sized train. The tiny little munchkin sized train that lasted about 5 minutes. The tiny munchkin five minute train ride with the conducter who sounded like a munchkin had bitten off her nose and felt that the more rise and fall to her tone of voice would totally make the ride exciting... she was mistaken... Greydon was unimpressed and ready to move on too, it was funny.


I love zoo gift stores; I could take one of everything. Kristen and I decided that we would wait for the WOW jaw dropping reaction to his favorite animal and let that decide the one thing we would take home to make sure we didn't go crazy. He had some wow jaw dropping moments that were great, moments that fascinated him, where he just was jabbering away and making sure were were seeing how cool everything was... They were, in order; A bench, a manhole cover, an air vent grate, and every garbage can we passed... We didn't buy anything in the gift store, luckily they don't sell benches.

It was a great fall day with leaves floating around us and the sun was just the right temperature as peacocks walked around us and kids were skipping and laughing. It was a good day.

I need to go buy a bench.