A zoo trip on Friday, the 13th

Amanda's school took a field trip to the zoo on Friday. Jared wanted to go, too, when he heard about the upcoming trip, and thanks to kind friends with a zoo membership, Mom and all the Muffins got to go! As you can see, Jared was quite happy to be there.

First stop, the petting zoo. Curtis loved the goats:

Next stop: the zoo train. Mom and the Muffins had never been on the train before, and it was a fun little ride. It also turned out to be a good way to see the elusive moose that hides in its forest out of sight from the main path.

Our official destination in the North American section was the Polar Frontier, featuring polar bears. However, the polar bears apparently weren't too thrilled with the abundance of field trip groups there that day, and so they stayed out of camera range. Good thing we got pictures of them last time. On the way out of the North America section, Mom saw the trumpeter swans.

Lydia fell asleep on the way out of North America, cuddling a rice krispy treat for sweet dreams.

Next stop: pink birds, also know as flamingos. Jared and Amanda had fun comparing notes after the zoo trip when they realized they'd both see the pink birds.

On the other side of the flamingo pond is the alligator pond (wouldn't it be great for wild flamingos if the alligators just kept to their own side like that?). You can see one of the gators behind Kai in this picture.

After the flamingos and alligators, Curtis decided it was time to embrace his wild side.

As Mom tried to hurry him off to see penguins with everyone else, he just had to sit and gaze longingly at the giant lizard statue. Oh, the pain of being denied contact with metal reptiles!

We did make it to the penguins eventually. The Humboldt penguins were quite accommodating for Mom's camera.

We made our way deeper into the zoo into the African Forest and found a leopard:

Right after we left the penguins, the boys started getting excited about monkeys, which is why we headed to Africa. Mom thought it was funny that they wanted to see monkeys so much, since Mom had already spotted at least one:

Here's Kai with a primate of some sort in the background. Mom thought it was classic for him to have a Curious George shirt on at a primate exhibit.

We found some genuine monkey bars for actual monkeys. (Okay, technically they were bonobo bars for actual bonobos; you get the idea, though.)

We also visited the gorillas:

Fun fact about the Columbus Zoo: it was there that Colo was born, the first gorilla born in captivity. She is also the oldest living gorilla in captivity. There's a picture of her under the "Don't slap the glass" sign shown below. Is she the same gorilla Mom got a picture of above?

By the time we got through the African Forest, it was rather hot, and we all felt a bit like the giant tortoise shown below. Definitely time to go home. We did see some okapi or "zebra giraffes" on the way out, but they wouldn't hold still for the camera.

Definitely a fun day at the zoo. One last story from the beginning of the trip, courtesy of Jared. He and Eli had run ahead a little and found the wolf exhibit. After looking at it for a couple of minutes, Jared ran back to Mom and said in alarm, "Mommy! There's a wolf there that blows down houses!" Nothing like Muffins to make a zoo trip even more entertaining. :)