Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My!

One of my favourite places to go in the world is museums and zoo. Now most people view zoo's as a little juvenile but I love the animals in them. I spent the first year in Edmonton working in West Edmonton Mall working near and in the marine life. Even though I wasn't allowed to actually touch and work with the animals because I didn't have the animal science background I found the animals very calming. I was always curious about being a veterinarian but realized that medical school and many years after in school to learn to work with large animals would be very difficult, especially with the science portion, which was not an area I was particularly good with. Note to all those hunky guys out there, if someone wants to get on my good side, taking me to a zoo is ok, but be prepared to spend long hours there and taking lots of pictures. Barb learned this this hard way. We have been talking about going to the Calgary zoo for the last four or five months. We did make an outing to the Edmonton Valley Zoo, which brought me to the brink of anger. I found the conditions so detestable I wanted to rip some body's head off and serve it on a platter. The sea life in that area have no room to swim in let alone move. So when the opportunity to go to the Calgary Zoo came up this weekend I was very excited to go there with Barb.

I found the zoo really fun. There was lots of areas for the animals to move around. the structures of the buildings were unbelievable, especially in the African safari building where it looked like some of the buildings you would normally see in papa new guinea. The manhole covers alone caused me to want to pick them up and take them home. They looked like the wind, something that you would see on an old..... bottom line this is the anthropology side of me coming out. As for the animals, the highlight of the whole trip was when we went around the Siberian Tiger cages. On the side they had the door open with one of the tiger's there that they were playing with. We were allowed to go in and play tug of war with him. It's not very often you get to go in and view a tiger so close, let alone play with one. Besides that, the opportunity to see hippos close up was unbelievable. I had never seen a hippo that close but had heard about it. They are huge and seem quite docile when you see them in their habitat. I made Barb take a billion pictures, some of what she thought were stupid statues. I like them and found they said something about the zoo. I was always saying Yahoo and Barb kept saying, You're weird. We spent from 11:30 to 3:30 in the zoo. We ran around the last bit of the zoo because we were exhausted by the time we got there. The parts we had saved for last were the Canadian/Alberta wildlife areas anyway. It's stuff Barb has grown up seeing her whole life. We looked, we saw, we moved on to the next one. I really enjoyed it. I loved seeing the animals and the structures. I was sad the gorilla's weren't out. I was sad the sting ray area had been closed for construction and the conservatory with all the butterflies was no longer there with a new building under construction. All in all it was a great day and would love to go and do it again. NOTE: Barb doesn't like random dumb, or any facts. So don't comment on facts to her, it drives her batty (and we saw a lot of those). I am totally about the facts and the animals and their habitat and where they come from.

Maybe I should have become a veterinarian LOL!!

P.S. Lucky Min made the car trip with us. What a Lucky Panda!