Louisville Zoo

First up were my favorite animals the giraffes.

The younger 4 enjoyed the petting zoo.

It was a real battle to get Janey Kate to only touch their backs.

Look at Emma's dress.  We had to take a picture with the vw van.

We walked around the corner and saw this guy and Creed took off running the other way.

The best exhibit was the polar bear.  He has a stick in his mouth;  he would dive down in the water and put the stick in a crevice in a rock and then swim back up.  A few seconds later, he'd come diving back down and pull it out and take it back up.  He did this over and over again.  I talked with a college student that was doing research, and she said it was a game he played.  She said the other polar bears would sometimes take it out and not put it back so the first thing this bear would do when he went in the water was to  check and make sure a stick was in there.  If it wasn't, he'd go find one and put it there.  We watched for a long time.  So amazing that an animal that massive could swim back to the top of the water.

The Louiville zoo is a lot of walking and a lot of hills.  3/4 of the way through Janey Kate shared the stroller with Creed and moved to Elizabeth's back.

We had a bit of adventure when we visited the Jaguar.  One of the kids noticed 3 dollars on the ground between the railing and the cage.  Anne Michal wanted to climb over and get it.  That suggestion didn't quite fly with me.

So then we tried to get Jack to let  Anne Michal and me hang him upside, but for some reason he didn't quite trust us.  We were trying to figure out what we could do when a gentleman, his wife, and granddaughter walked up.

He tried to help us and then offered to hang Jack upside down.  Jack said that would be ok.  I said, "You mean you trust a complete stranger over your own family!!!!!"  He told me he'd rather a male do it.  :-)  So then the man suggested that the two of us do it.

He managed to collect the money and we reeled him back in.  Notice how close he was to the Jaguar.  We told the man we were doing it more for the adventure than the three dollars and he agreed that he'd have a story to tell!

They always want a snake picture of their Aunt Melissa.

We loved this guy too.  He was right up close in our faces(behind glass) and had the longest eyelashes.  He kept moving his eyes back and forth watching everyone.