Friday, July 24, 2009

An Afternoon at Oglebay's Good Zoo

While watching my sister's friends, Michael and Alyssa, today, we decided that we were going to use our free zoo passes to visit the local zoo after going to Burger King. Even though I've been to this zoo many times, it's still entertaining. The meerkats were active, looking cute and sitting up on the fake rocks to look at every passer-by. Two were pacing back and forth like they were waiting for food.



The zoo was packed, mostly because of the new attraction: the 18' python! It was HUGE, even when curled up in the corner like it was. It was lazy at the time, only opening its mouth every now and then to breathe. The whole time I was on edge, even with the thick glass in between me and the giant snake. We headed outside after taking a longer look than necessary.

After walking up a steep hill, we all stopped at the otter pen. They were so cute and active, swimming around like they were putting on a show! Next to their enclosed pond is the spectacled bear. He was busy playing in his pond and stayed away from the window.

With a brief stop at the ostrich pen, we headed to the lorikeets...

Rainbow LorikeetImage by iansand via Flickr



At this zoo, you can walk into the netted area and feed these small, colorful birds with little cups of nectar. For me, it's quite terrifying to see one fly at my head, so I opted out of getting nectar. I sat down on one of the benches, watching the kids scramble around with birds on their hands. Another few families joined in, and the birds started to get into a frenzy.
I started relaxing when a large lorikeet flew at my head, causing me to squawk louder than the birds and quickly duck. It landed behind me on the back of the bench, settling down and resting quietly. Michael had some nectar left over, so he let the bird have some. It moved onto his hand, and I relaxed again. After a few more close calls, we left that area and went down the hill to the rest of the exhibits.


There was an ocelot, 4 lemurs, a pond with turtles, ducks, swans, goats, donkeys, a pig, two barn owls, two wild dogs, a red panda with two Chinese gorals in the same pen, and a few other animals.


Ailurus fulgens RoterPanda LesserPanda.Image via Wikipedia

Of course we had to stop in the gift shop before leaving, and I ended up paying for candy and wax lips...
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