Dallas Zoo – October 23
Natalie and I decided to take a random day off in the middle of a hectic work, house buying, pandemic schedule, and decided we’d head a few miles south to visit all the critters at the Dallas Zoo. It rained all morning, and the following cold front brought with it ripping winds, but considering it’s been in the 90s here lately, we figured it might still be worth it.
There’s nothing better than driving up to an empty parking lot and seeing a two person line to get in. We had the run of the place, and decided to just go with the flow. No map, no plan. Just stroll along and see what animals crossed our path.
The flamingos were out in full force, as were most of the birds. Saw quite a few squirrels and one house cat wandering around in the pin with some egrets and turtles. A lot of the big cats were inside, though, which is unfortunate.
Probably the best time we had was watching the 4 year old elephant calf running around, trumpeting his little brains out. His mother was worried and was following close, but the logs around the enclosure didn’t stand a chance against this guy. He was moving everything. Splashing in every puddle.
If you came here for snakes, you can turn back now. I hate snakes. The reptile house was full up with those things. The rattlesnake, in fact, got annoyed with my camera. He coiled up and started shaking his tail at us, lashing his tongue out and staring us down with those beady eyes. I hated it. I stopped taking pictures out of fear that some sort of demonic magic would shatter the sensor in my camera.
The gorillas were really active as well. Well, two of the three anyway. The big guy was asleep by the glass, giving all the kids a great view of his massive silver ass. The other two were up on top of the hill, eye level with the observation tower and the other surrounding view points. Seemed like they were enjoying the limited audience.
We stayed around the gorillas for quite a bit. Sometimes we were watching the apes, sometimes we were watching the other kids watch the apes. Quite a few people ended up congregating around and watching these guys play. I say that, but looking at these photos, it almost seems like the they couldn’t care less.
The giraffes were a hoot, too. They had a feeding station set up where you could buy some romaine lettuce and give it to the animals. Natalie ended up going for it, of course. Pavlov would have been proud at how fast the giraffes bolted over when they saw somebody coming. We hung out for a bit watching the goofy things gobbling up as much of the leafy green stuff as they could before we moved over to the lions.
There were 3 females out sitting in the grass, but they were hidden behind the wall of the enclosure. One of them got up while we were standing there and started staring out across the path, back towards the way we had come. I have no idea what they would have seen. There wasn’t anything around, but they were transfixed. Absolutely glued. I got a good shot of it, which you can see below. Iguana is unrelated.
Overall, it was a fun day. Didn’t have to deal with other people or traffic, and we got to interact and spend time with plenty of animals. We missed out on a few, but we’ll be back again soon.
They were setting up the dinosaur exhibit while we were there…
