Yesterday we went to the zoo. We had not planned on this little outing but when you wake up in the morning and it’s a beautiful day and your 8 year old says, “Let’s go to the zoo”, what’s a mom to say. So, we loaded up the car and went to the zoo. Usually spontaneity makes for the best kinds of field trips. We had a really nice morning.
Our local zoo (Ellen Trout Zoo) is really pretty amazing. Lufkin has about 35,000 residents — not a large city by any means but it has a very nice zoo. We used to live in much larger city in Texas (over 200,000 residents). There would be the occasional article in the paper about folks wanting a zoo. The conclusion was always that a town that small couldn’t support a zoo. Well, apparently they had never heard of Lufkin and its zoo.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do at the zoo is to eat near the Giraffe exhibit. There are some really nice covered observation areas in the zoo and they all have nice clean tables and chairs. It’s a great place for a picnic. I usually don’t think about it until we’re there but this time, we actually succeeded in doing this.
The Hippopotamus is always a big hit with the boys. The exhibit allows you to see them above ground and underwater — which is nice since that’s where they seem to always be.
One thing the zoo has plenty of is peacocks. There are beautiful males, females with their young and even a couple of pure white ones. They are very pretty and very tame. They let you almost get close enough to touch them and then scamper just out of reach.
There is a bird aviary that is always fun to go through. The birds are beautiful and you feel like your walking amongst them. On this day though, my husband stayed outside the aviary with the cooler while we all walked through it. Three of the birds (are they parrots?) began following Danny up and down as he walked. When he walked, they walked, when he stopped they stopped. It was quite funny to watch. We got to thinking that maybe their keeper drags a cooler like ours around when he feeds them so Danny left the cooler and walked down aways. Sure enough, the birds stayed near the cooler.
My 10 year old has shown an interest in photography. In fact, he was the photographer of several of these photos. He wanted to take a picture of Benjamin sitting on a bench looking at the lake. I thought it turned out to be a nice picture.
It was sweet seeing him pose his brother for just the right shot so Danny tried to take a picture of Jonathan taking a picture of Benjamin. He was a little late and got a picture of Jonathan as he scampered off from taking the picture.
