Don't Feed the Animals!

One thing I love about D.C. is all the free stuff there is to do (granted, most of the free stuff is subsidized through tax dollars. So thank you for paying your taxes so I have entertainment on the weekends)

This week we decided to take advantage of the Smithsonian National Zoo. The craziest part about the zoo to me is you’re walking up a busy street with high-rise apartments on both sides and all of a sudden there is this big opening and you walk into a zoo. There’s even a 7-11 across the street. I guess I’m just used to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake where you have to drive up the canyon away from the city before you get to the zoo.

I was also surprised at how big it was and how much there was to see. When we walked in we decided to get a map so we could make sure to see everything we wanted to see. When I asked the lady for a map, she told me they were five dollars. I told her no thank you, to which she replied, “but the money goes to support the zoo.” I of course said, “Yeah, and so do my tax dollars.”

Needless to say we ended up wandering around aimlessly. But we did get to see a lot of cool things. We saw the famous Pandas of course, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and the baby, Tai Shan. (Random side note: I just searched the Smithsonian site to find the spellings for the names of the Pandas and discovered that you can get Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and Tai Shan ringtones. I don’t know about you, but I believe ringtones have gotten a little ridiculous, but that’s another blog in itself).

We also got to see the birds, reptiles, felines, bears, giraffes, elephants, hippopotami, etc. The hippopotamus even had a huge red rubber ball to play with. I was glad to see the zoo keepers were replicating its natural habitat as accurately as possible.

The highlight for us was the Ape/Orangutan Habitat. There was this one ape that was definitely a crowd pleaser. We walked in and all of these people were gathered around the glass looking into its area. This ape would throw up all over the glass, lick it up, move down a few feet and throw up once more. He was doing this over and over and the people couldn’t get enough. It was disgusting for sure, but we just couldn’t take our eyes off it. Then I looked around his habitat and there were empty pizza boxes everywhere. He must have had a crazy block party the night before and was still recovering. Apparently the pizza man missed the sign that said, “Please don’t feed us, our zoo diets are great.”

So I highly recommend the zoo as a day o’ fun for everyone. Just make sure to take some money so you can pick up a map and whatever you do, don’t feed the animals.