Outings With Celeste

Since Celeste has been so good at telling us the noise a lion makes [WAV] (and because the weather was fantastic this afternoon), I decided today was a good day to go to the zoo.

We started off with the Kids' Farm, where she was really into the burros — they were pretty small and close to the fence; she couldn't quite reach them, but she tried. I tried to get her to walk away from the burros a few times, but she kept leading me back to them ... until one of the cows in the field on the opposite side of the path started mooing. Then she wanted to go see what was up. We then headed toward the chicken coop, which held her attention until a few bigger kids walked up.

Next up was Amazonia. I'm not sure Celeste really "got" the big river/aquarium parts of the exhibit, but she did do a lot of staring, particularly at the giant South American river turtles (Podocnemis expansa) and the shovelnose catfish (Sorubin lima). Most interesting, however, were the 9-month-old and her mother that were next to us and the older kids who were running around. When we got up to the rainforest part of the exhibit, she was pretty interested in the dusky titi monkeys (Callicebus moloch) who were perched at just above eye level (when I was holding her) and less than a half meter away.

After Amazonia we took a quick trip past the sloth bears (too far back in the enclosure for Celeste to really see them well) and the sea lion before heading to the lions and tigers. The lions (Panthera leo) — despite Celeste's roaring when prompted — were pretty boring, just laying there asleep. The tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae), however, were much more active: Celeste really took notice when one of them jumped on the other in a bout of play. She also liked the caracal (Caracal caracal).

After a little more wandering around, we headed home ... and, unlike her trip with Evelin and G--- and K--- on Monday to feed ducks at Lake Artemesia, she didn't get stung by a yellowjacket (Vespula maculifrons). About that trip, Celeste'd been eating a peach and apparently that attracted the wasp, which ended up stinging her on her lip and hand. Evelin said Celeste cried for about two minutes, and both sting sites were a bit swollen last night, but looked a lot better today. The other funny bit was that Celeste didn't want to share any of the bread with the ducks; most every piece Evelin gave her to throw to the birds, Celeste tried to eat first.