National Zoo

(You can see an elephant by Buddy's leg in this picture of all three kids).

The weather was wonderful last week so I advertised on Facebook that we were taking a trip to the zoo if anyone wanted to join us last Thursday. Five other moms came with 11 other kids and one husband. Plus B drove us there, took the Metro to the Library of Congress to get a library card (an assignment for one of his classes this semester) and then rode the Metro back and joined us at the zoo.

We went to the zoo in the late summer/early fall of 2009 when we first moved here and it was hot and crowded and we got rained out. The pandas are my favorite since they are sort of a zoo rarity. The pandas still weren't outside on this trip, but the crowds were small enough that we got a great view of them inside. In the films below, we were totally alone watching the second panda eating the bamboo for a few minutes before the crowd from the first panda joined us. There are only two pandas now. I think there were four last time we came but they went back to China (or wherever they were on loan from).

With no crowds and unusually great weather, we got a lot of attention from zoo volunteers explaining things to us about the monkeys vs. apes, the two year old baby gorilla and the giant silverback gorilla. In the invertebrate building we got to see a zoo volunteer feed a hermit crab and a spiked horned crab of some sort. There were seven lion cubs (born last summer/fall) that Buddy (our lion lover) was thrilled to see. It was a lot of fun. And the weather was fabulous. We went in the bird house... which I don't remember doing last time, and this giant blue pigeon-like bird (pictured above) walked past us. Little Guy liked him and called him the bird with sticking up hair.

You can mute this... although at the beginning you can hear Buddy giggle a little. There was a woman next to us talking nonstop about the panda. There are vitamins in the toy that the panda is trying to get out. They need vitamins since bamboo is all they eat and is a horrible diet.