It’s a Zoo!

At least that’s how it must feel to the kindergarten teachers at the end of the year!

No, wait…we really DID go to the zoo!

The kindergarten classes were schedule to go to the Dallas Zoo on May 8.  Everything was all set: forms returned, money turned in, schedules arranged…and then the swine flu hit and every out-of-district activity was cancelled.  Including our zoo trip.  But thanks to some quick thinking and hard work by the teachers and zoo personnel, we were able to reschedule our trip for today!

We invited Grandma to join us for this big day, and she arrived around 8:15 to go to school with us and get checked in.  Much to our disappointment (NOT), we weren’t allowed to ride the bus.  So instead we began the day with a visit to Manna Donuts for a well-deserved coffee break and then began the long drive to the zoo.  We arrived just behind the McGowen buses and were instructed to park in the north 40 in overflow parking.  Believe me, in all my days of going to the zoo, I’ve never had to park in overflow parking.  Of course, I usually take the train – but still!  We were concerned with how crowded it would be.   School group after school group filed through the parking lot, and we wondered how we would be able to navigate the exhibits!

Finally, we were allowed in to the zoo…and believe it or not, it wasn’t as crowded as we had expected!  Crisana was paired with a little girl named Julia, who kept us stepping lively the whole day at the zoo.  We were already in need of a rest after our first stop.

We saw the raptors, the large mammals (elephants, giraffes, and hippos), and then headed toward the reptile building.  On the way, we had to stop and climb the turtle sculpture.

We wandered through the butterfly garden on the way, but saw very few butterflies.  The docent informed us that the butterflies were hidden among the flowers because it was cloudy.  They are active and fly when it is sunny.  So we headed toward the snake building so Julia could see her rattlesnakes.

We also saw something I had never seen before in my life: an albino alligator.  Pretty cool, even if it is a vicious predator.

At this point, it was lunchtime.  We headed out of the reptile building and found a great picnic table just outside the butterfly garden.  We enjoyed a delicious lunch (and entertaining conversation, thanks to Julia) in the great outdoors.

And then…the sun came out!  We hurried back into the butterfly garden and saw hundreds of beautiful little winged creatures fluttering about!  A few even held still long enough for me to get their close up.

We hustled through the rest of our exhibits: the camels, rhinos, cheetas, llamas, bongos, ibex, and tigers before it was time to head back to the bus.  On our way, we passed by the monkeys who were having a great time just hanging around.  I thought this was just too funny not to take a picture of:

Yep, that’s truly the definition of “hanging out.”  We drove back to school where we promptly picked up our little zoo adventurer and her brother and headed to McDonald’s for some ice cream and play time.  Amazingly enough, we made it before the after-school crowd arrived.  Thankfully that was one part of our day that WASN’T a zoo!