martinzoo

On our recent trip to the zoo we experienced an interaction with the local orangutan. Everytime we go, this animal is always animated and loves to interact with people. I have even seen him wave to people when they leave him.

My husband is the only one I’ve ever seen who can chuck a piece of the zoo food across the little creek that separates the orangutan from the zoo visitors. So we always get interesting interactions.

This time, after throwing over dozens of pieces of food, the orangutan got impatient and started beckoning my husband to hurry up and throw some more. It was really funny.

Here is a pic of the penguin feeding. An interesting fact that I learned today, was that male and female penguins have no distinguishing features. The only way for a zoologist to find out the sex of the penguin is to take a blood sample at birth and send it off to a lab. Then they have to keep really good records. Isn’t that weird?

I love to watch the penguins get fed..

This week has been our Spring Break. On Monday and Tuesday, I went grocery shopping and caught up on lots of haircutting that I needed to get done….. Not so much fun for me, but GB was happy to have a couple of days to just do his own thing. The weather wasn’t very good either, pretty cold and rainy.

Yesterday we went to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg. It was a great day, but not without frustrations. We have gotten season passes for years and we love going. I, personally, am a HUGE fan of roller coasters, and have passed this love on to my children. So, this is one thing we can all do together. This year, in BG’s infinite wisdom, they have implemented a new rule; You cannot ride the roller coasters with ANY kind of carry-on, no purses, backpacks, cell phones, camera bags, baby bags, etc. Since we all ride together, the only options we had were to ride in shifts, since I always bring a backpack and end up being the pack-mule for the family, or we could pay a dollar for a locker each time we rode a coaster together…… annoying! If I were wearing one of those tacky little fanny packs there would have been no problem because that is “attached” to my body. So we became annoying park-goers and asked to speak to a park representative. We told him that this was not a good idea because we could see that lots of other people were just sticking purses or backpacks in lockers without paying for them (which could easily get stolen), OR worse than that, they were leaving them on the ground, outside the ride. Now you tell me that THAT is not dangerous. Stuff is going to get stolen right and left! He gave us coins to pay for our lockers, and said he would certainly tell the higher-ups about our complaints (we actually started a trend of complaints from people who were listening).

The new rule is to actually make the lines go faster, so that attendants don’t have to take bags from riders and place them in cubbies for them while they ride. But they’ll take your flip-flops from you and place them in a cubbie so they don’t go flying off during the ride… So what’s the freakin’ difference?! I’m not going to pay an additional $5.00, just to ride the coasters, so I’m going to email Busch Gardens and vent, and next time I’ll wear the dumb fanny pack.

Other than that episode we had a great time. Here is an amazing picture I took of an American Bald Eagle that Busch Garden’s rescued from Alaska. It had been hit by a car.

Today we will hit the zoo………again! We love the zoo!