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.

Sifaka Family

Despite my allergies acting up (this is getting to be a very boring and annoying pattern), when I awoke very early in the day, I decided to visit the Houston Zoo. This was both a smart and stupid idea. Smart because I went before the crowds and got some great pictures of a few animals. But it was also Earth Day and therefore elementary school field trip day. YIKES.

I was introduced to the sifakas by some colleagues who love them more than I. However, I agree that they are adorable, especially when they have a newborn son. Kelyfamata was born Jan 6, 2009. I finally got to see him and it was so worth waiting for. He's quite adorable and starting to get more independent so there were times he was away from momma, cuter than can be.

When Zenobia (momma) was pregnant, she didn't get along with her mate, Dean, so it was really nice to see the whole family out on exhibit.

Here's the highlights of the 40 pictures I uploaded to flickr (downgraded from who knows how many):











Post about the world's cutest (yet sleepiest) animal next...