My wife and son and I just returned from the Willamette Valley, where we visited the Enchanted Forest (more on that another time) and the Oregon Zoo. We had a great time, and I'm just now finally recovering enough from the car lag (and the email backlog) enough to blog about the place.
I've been to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle and the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, and I'm happy to say that the Oregon Zoo keeps up with the jones'.
At Woodland Park, they have this enlosed greenhouse-tent full of butterflies where you are invited to enter and see them up close. At the Oregon zoo they have a Lorikeet greenhouse with a similar twist. You can purchase cups of modified apple juice to attract the lories to you. In both places, I was soon covered in 3-7 amorous animals at a time, much to the amazement of their keepers, and had the opportunity to coax many of them onto mystified children and tourists. And I'd get pooped on. ;)
We got to watch the baby elephant Chendra demonstrate her inginuity as she dug a pit underneath a fence to his enclosure, snaked her trunk out and reached a good 5 or 6 feet out to nab some local vegitation to snack on. I have some IRC penpals from Malaysia, one of them asked me what the food here was like. Once I can remember who asked I'll let them know we have the Chendra seal of approval ;)
We got a very good view of the Hippos for a change. They swam right up to where we were behind the glass, so we could see them pretty clearly through the water's surface, and they would pop the tops of their heads out to flick their ears at us. It looked like a baby and it's mother.
We also got a very good view of an Amur Leapord. They have this false house set up (small enough that adults have to duck down) with one wall being a window into the leopard's habitat. Our leopard was crashed out right in front of the window, almost like she was basking at us. Imagine a college student zonked out in front of a large A/C :) She was facing away from us so we could only see her beautiful coat and paws. Darla took a snapshot, and the weak flash on her throwaway camera (or the clicking sound) was enough for our friend to raise up her head and check us out. She was very beautiful and her green-teal eyes reflected balefully at us like lamps. After she was satisfied we weren't going to bite her in the rump, she slumped back down to obtain additional Z's.
So what zoo or zoo-like amalgamation have any of you enjoyed the most?
Posted by jesse at July 10, 2004 06:49 PM