If I Could Talk With the Animals. . .

I always loved the zoo as a kid. I even love it as an adult. I loved taking my first-graders there when I taught. Now I can enjoy it all over again with Harper. My mom and I first took Harper to the zoo when we were visiting in Wisconsin last August. Harper was too little to notice a lot of it, but I think she just enjoyed the fresh air.

Since then, Harper has grown into quite the animal lover, marveling over everything from our dog to the birds in the yard. Lately, when she's excited about something, she lets out an enthusiastic, "Wow!" I thought for sure the zoo would be one "wow" after another for her this year. Let's just say I was half-right.

The Friday before Easter we had an unbelievably warm day for April in Wisconsin. It was actually about 80 degrees outside and perfectly sunny. Harper and I headed to the zoo with Uncle Jamie and Auntie Shannon. Grandma, whose birthday it was, opted to stay home and take a nap with all the kids out of the house. Harper did enjoy being at the zoo, but her favorite parts had little to do with the zoo animals.

She liked climbing on the planters and rocks surrounding the exhibits. She liked the geese, which wandered everywhere and are exactly like the geese we see all the time here in Ohio. She liked watching the bazillion other children who were at the zoo. She mostly liked running freely toward the nearest open space. Harper was not a fan of her stroller during out zoo outing. I love zoo pictures about as much as playground pictures, but as Harper mostly refused to be still during this outing, these aren't very good. Of course, I'm posting them anyway!

This picture was taken in front of the lion exhibit in the feline house at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Yes, there was an actual, grown, male lion behind the glass. Huge mane and all. Did Harper care? Not so much. But she did think the decorative rocks made a pretty nifty seat:



This one's actually a pretty good picture, even though you can't tell what Harper is looking at. We took it in the reptile house/aquarium of the zoo. She actually got pretty excited about the fish, or "sish," as she calls them:

I think the Milwaukee County Zoo is actually pretty great, as far as zoos go. The building with the reptiles and fish is, in my humble opinion, one of its best features. Even though this picture is blurry, taken with no flash, I thought it was great for getting an idea of the scale of the tanks in there. They are full of these huge fish, some nearly as big as Harper. She stood in front of it, totally mesmerized, as they swam right in front of her nose:

I remember standing in front of those same tanks as a child, and the dizzy feeling I would get if I stood right up to the glass and looked down. It felt like I'd slip right into the water. I also remember how easy it was to be startled if I was looking at something toward the back of the tank and a fish would swim past me from the side. It was thrilling. The freshwater tanks also make me a little scared of swimming in lakes.

Being very thrifty, we packed our lunch and ate in one of the group picnic areas. By then we were all pooped from chasing Harper for a few hours. After lunch we made one quick stop in the little working dairy. That's Wisconsin for you, there is an honest-to-goodness dairy in the zoo, complete with milking presentations throughout the day and homemade ice cream. Seeing (and smelling) those cows up close may have been the best part of Harper's day. We were only about a foot from several large cows, just munching away on hay (the cows munched, not us). And yes, Harper did "moo" at them.

All in all it was a great day, if not what I expected. We're hoping to take a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo when Aunt Meaghan visits us in May, I can't wait. (I'm sure Harper is also counting the days.)