Rough Draft

San Francisco Zoo

Sarah and I went up to the San Francisco Zoo on Friday and had an awesome time. First I want to say that the drive up to San Francisco is really nice, especially when you're doing it late on a Friday morning and there's no traffic. Also, right before you get to the zoo there is a wonderful view of the Pacific Ocean from the highway.

The first place we went in the zoo was the "Children's Zoo". It had a bunch of typical animals like rabbits and birds of prey and a petting area with goats, sheep, and miniature donkeys. There was also this really scary looking Nigerian Dwarf Goat which was in its own area and kept making scary noises while pushing against its pen.

The Children's Zoo also had what was one of the best animals in the entire zoo, the prairie dogs. There were at least 50 of them in the habitat. Occasionally a bunch of them would jump up and make this yipping noise. Sarah took an Animal Behavior class at Case, and apparently the professor was obsessed with prairie dogs, so she told me a lot about them. One thing being that there are a small set of them which act as lookouts. You can tell them because they're standing up, usually on a hill, and not eating. They communicate to all of the others through various tale movements. Then after some period of time they switch out who the lookouts all. It was pretty interesting to watch them. We ending up stopping by to watch the prairie dogs 3 times during the day. Also, the first time we were there a zoo keeper came in to remove some cages from their habitat. As soon as the zoo keeper entered the habitat, all the prairie dogs scurried underground, in what had to have been less than 2 seconds. It was amazing how quickly it went from being active and filled with prairie dogs to completely silent and empty.

They also had meerkats in the Children's Zoo which were pretty cool and behaved a lot like the prairie dogs. Seeing the meerkats also brought up discussions of The Lion King. By the end of the day, we had seen animals for just about all of the main characters from movie. I told Sarah she needed to break out Photoshop and make a Lion King montage from the pictures she took.

My other top animal species for the day was the penguins. The penguins had quite a large area. There were a lot that were swimming around, and playing under the hose spraying water into the pool. Then there were a whole bunch more just hanging out on the island. They were really fun to watch. They're so graceful in the water, and really funny to watch on land. I was amused by them hopping down the 1/2" steps on the sides of the cave filled mountain living area. There was also one fat brown penguin. We found out it was molting, and when a penguin is molting its feathers are not water proof. This means in the wild they wouldn't get food, so they gain 50% of their body weight before they start the molting process.

We also found out that they feed the penguins between 3 and 3:30. We came back around 3, but didn't see anyone there to feed them, so we walked over to watch the river otters. Then I spotted the zookeeper lady in a golf cart and said, "I bet she has fish." As she drove by, we saw the buckets of fish and went running over the penguins. The penguins came streaming out of the water and crowded all around the fish buckets. Apparently some of the fish had pills in them and they had to give certain fish to certain penguins. After any given penguin had its fish, it would waddle off and dive into the water. There was this one penguin that refused to get out and just kept swimming back and forth looking over at the zookeeper. Apparently most of the penguins were named, my favorite being Noodles. I also remember Duke, and Pepper. Oh, and of course being the dorks that we are, Sarah and I had to dub one Tux while we were watching them.

We also had a chance to see the lions and tigers get fed. I'm always amazed at the size of the big cats, especially their paws. It was quite a sight seeing the huge father lion suddenly appear in the doorway between the inside cage and the outside habitat. There were a lot of people around the lions, so Sarah and I went down to the cages where the tiger's were going to come in and were right in front. Then the zookeeper got the wheelbarrow of raw meat and went down the line putting into the cages. For all but one of the cats, he just pushed it in through the cage, but for the last tiger there was a metal slide affixed to the outside of the cage that he put the meat in, so I guess that tiger was a bit more ferocious than the rest.

Earlier in the day we had watched the tigers while they were outside. It was neat because you could be right next to the cage that kept them in their habitat, unlike the Cleveland Zoo where there is a huge moat between you and the tigers. The one wall of their habitat was made of plexiglas and while we were standing there the two tigers just kept pacing around in circles and would walk right next to the plexiglas and stare at us as they walked by. I really enjoyed watching them.

I almost about the peacock that seemed to be following us. At least 5 times through the day we would be walking or watching some animals and this peacock would suddenly appear behind us. So, it's pretty likely that it wasn't the same one everytime, but it was still really weird. We never saw more than one at a time, except when we saw 2 running off the path into some bushes.

The one disappointment for the day was the feline conservatory because hardly any of the cats were out. We did see a snow leopard out, and a fishing cat laying on top of its cage, but otherwise all the habitats were empty. It was pretty cool in the morning, but it was quite warm by the time we left so we were hoping they'd be out by then, but they weren't.

The zoo was a lot of fun, and a great way to spend the day. And fortunately it took me a lot less time to visit the San Francisco Zoo than the 4 years it took me to finally make it to the Cleveland Zoo. At some point I also want to get down to the San Diego Zoo, especially since it's known as the best zoo in the country.