Leopard, leopard

Towards the end of last year, I had posted about Ana's first visit to the Oregon Zoo. We had our reservations, but, Ana had a lot of fun.

An opportunity presented itself to take her to the Oregon Zoo again a few days ago: we were given free tickets:-) As D had things to attend to in the morning, I decided to take Ana first and if possible, D will meet us there at the Zoo, so we can come back home together.

I prepared Ana that morning, "City bus la eri, apparam train la eri, Zoo kku polam, OK?" (We'll take the city bus, then the train, and go to the Zoo, OK?). She got quite excited as she has this San Diego Zoo DVD with okapi and wallaby and hedgehog and such, so, she knew she would get to see animals. She asked several times to make sure she will get to see elephants and bears. All I could say was, "We'll see... maybe they will decide to hide and we won't be able to find them"...

We hopped on the bus, transferred to the train, and after about 45 minutes journey which Ana thoroughly enjoyed, we arrived at the Zoo. We had a lot of fun. We naturally made a beeline for the elephants area and watched them eat for a while.

A polar bear graced us with its performance of peeing in the pool, standing on the shore, with its read end in our plain sight. Ana could not let it go. She kept repeating, "Pola bay pee pee inna pool, amma, uh-oh...", it was quite funny to hear her sincere and worried tone...

She loved the bald eagles, and bears, and wild cats. Even without our help, she made the connection between how similar the leopard's playing was to our kitties' playing at home! Here's a short movie I took of the Leopard playing...

Leopard at Oregon Zoo

Then, D finally managed to meet us at the Zoo. We were at this little pond with ducks, egrets and what-not. There was a manual/book with pictures to help identify the birds and learn more about them, conveniently at kids' height. How thoughtful! Ana waited her turn, got to the book, flipped through and landed on the page with a picture of egret, then, got our attention, pointed to the egret sitting on a branch over the pond in front of us and exclaimed "Look, appa! This one! Bird! This one!" pointing to the picture in the book. That made it worthwhile.

It was way past her nap time and she was quite tired and we had to really call it a day after 4 hours at the Zoo. By the time we strapped her in the car seat and pulled out, she nodded off, dreaming about leopards and elephants and peeing polar bears, I am sure :-)