July 30, 2018

Baby Takin

The Minnesota Zoo was amazing. We spent the entire day there from opening to closing. They had a full schedule of feedings and keeper talks so we got online ahead of time to plan our day. Chloe chose which activities we were going to try to hit and we worked out a not-too-killer schedule… or so we thought. It’s a big zoo!

Dinner Time in the land Down Under

We started with the super cute penguin feeding, moved on to seal training, watched the bird show where they fly out over the audience almost touching our heads, saw the shark feeding, accidentally caught the (not so) wild boar training,

Wild Boar Training

met a porcupine (she walks out and up to the platform on her own – no cage, no leash, just a big tu-tu of quills swaying as she goes),

Free Range Porcupine

watched grizzly bears play in the water,

and hand fed a wallaby.

We could see baby joeys in the kangaroo mom’s pouches in the field.

They have a huge tropics trail , a working family farm (with piglets),

a herd of caribou,

and live moose! Yes, we finally saw live moose. Unfortunately they were captive, but at least they weren’t stuffed. It’s the best we managed on this trip. They had been hiding in the shade all day so we lucked out when they happened to be right against the fence as we raced to reach the front of the zoo before they closed. Naturally, we had to stop and visit but we still managed to avoid being locked in.

The big cats are usually lounged out but we caught this tiger testing the water – to drink? to jump in? just mesmerized by the ripples? We don’t know, he was still watching the water when we moved on.

This handsome guy is a Transcaspian urial. I point this out because Chloe had a cool Fisher Price play mat that made taught the alphabet and made animal sounds. It had one cute plastic animal for each letter of the alphabet and the letter “U” was represented by the urial. I don’t know about the rest of you but that was the first I ever heard of such a thing… but now I’ve seen one in person. Thank you Minnesota Zoo.

“U” is for Urial

As usual, we could have easily spent another day (or two, or three, or four) there but the schedule was tight so we moved on.

H