Fun at the Zoo in January

Unexpectedly -  St. Louis had a slightly warm turn in weather. Combined with sunshine and a day off, I decided to spend a morning at the Zoo. It was well-worthwhile. I wanted a good walk and a lot of the animals were feisty.

Like these kangaroos - for example. They're not playing peek-a-boo or hugging. They wrestle with their very short arms and then balance on their tails and kick the daylights out of the other. I wouldn't want to mess with one of them.

        

As much as it was scary, it was impressive. Then I moved to my favorite part of the Zoo, Big Cat Country.

There were two new pumas, and they were the only two not napping at the time. Puma was doing a McKayla Maroney impression:

While the other meditated:

The snow leopards were snoozing, and then grooming each other:

  

The lone Amur tiger, spent most of the time napping, but deigned to look up at me (sort of) after lots of patient waiting:

The lions were particularly interesting - it's a whole family - mom, dad, and 2-3 offspring or at least younger lions.

Two of the youngest were wrestling each other:

 

And Mom and Dad had a bit of a fight:

And I think the oldest walked away:

I also visited the "River Wild" where animals like the elephants live... an area I rarely get to because it is on the opposite side of the park than I usually go to - it's also the newer part.

These are just a few of the 80 or so that were keepers - with such feisty animals, it was really hard to pare down similar photos from the kangaroo fights or the lion wrestling matches. Check them out on my photo stream here.