San Diego Zoo Part 2

The peacocks wake you up to another beautiful day. You get everything together to go into the zoo again. You pack some sandwiches in a small lunch box and put the box in a backpack with some waters. You give the backpack to your dad and head inside.

The lines aren't as long as yesterday, but they are still long. You slip ahead and swipe your card. After you get through the gates you pull out your map and you and your family choose where to go first. You all decide to go to see the tiger.

You walk down the concrete trail. Leafy bushes, tall balboa trees, and other green foliage line the trail. It shields you from the sun's rays and leads you past and exhibit with some small black monkeys. The monkeys swing on ropes and cling onto poles. They are funny to watch. One reaches its long hairy arm around another and swings to a branch knocking the one it swung around off balance. The trail leads you around a bend and past a tapir exhibit. Tapirs look like a white and black banded pig with a long nose. One is laying down in the shade and the other is eating. After you leave the exhibit, the trail winds uphill to the tiger cage. You peer through the 3 or 4 pane glass. There lays the tiger. The tiger's orange and black body moves up and down with each breath. The tiger is about 6 feet long and lays completely flat. It is very beautiful and vivid. You can't see its face because it is lying with its tail to you.

This trail leads you up a hill to the hippo enclosure and okapi enclosure. It turns into the hippo lower viewing area. The giant body of a hippo sits in the water like a giant boulder. If you only to a glance it could be mistaken as one. The giant gray mass moves a little in the water and you notice a smaller gray mass. It is a baby hippo from this year. Its nose has a pinkish tint and it is adorable. It stays with its mother and the mother moves blocks it again to protect it from the viewers. You go to the top viewing area, but can't see either hippo. The okapi pen shares the same viewing area. The tall animal looks like a hybrid between a giraffe and zebra. It is the size of a newborn giraffe, but it is brown and it has black and white stripes on its legs.

You go to the gorillas next. You have to travel back down the trail with the tiger enclosure and take another trail spur off of that. A squirrel crosses your path after you turn onto the trail that leads to the gorillas. It stops on the side under a bush. The puffy tail twitches and then it scurries off. You go around a corner and reach the gorilla enclosures. Whenever you go to a zoo you notice they always look sad. Even though they have a beautiful enclosure they are the only animal in the zoo that look sad. All of the gorillas have their backs to you. They are so much like humans, it is hard to watch them. After all, staring is impolite.

Baby Pygmy Hippo. No claim to rights.

One of the trails that takes you to the pygmy hippos goes through an aviary. The viewing area for the pygmy hippos are under a pavilion. You watch the two pygmy hippos through the glass pane that separates the public from them. They are about the size of a large pig. They sit in the water not moving. A monkey that shares the enclosure hops onto one of the hippos backs that is partially out of the water. Talk about a monkey on its back. They are lighter in color than the larger hippos.

Next to the pygmy hippos are dwarf crocodiles. They are just like a giant crocodile, just smaller and cuter. You see two of them. One is resting against the glass. They are only about 4 feet long and dark green with some almost black spots. Even though it is awesome to see them you most certainly wouldn't want them to get loose.

After the pygmy hippos, you decide to see the orangutans. On your way to the orangutan enclosure, you stop at the mandrills. The all remind you of the Disney movie The Lion King. The biggest male in the cage is a real life Rafiki, aside from not living in Africa and not using a cane. You continue walking under the tree canopy to the orangutans. The orangutans are different from the gorillas. These guys like people. One of the males is always doing something funny. And he is always carrying around a sack. He rolls past the viewing window. There is a female orangutan laying down in a net suspended in air. With her is her little baby. The baby is hilarious. It climbs around but doesn't get too far before its mother grabs it and lays it next to her. It has long crazy orange hair. The arms look longer than the legs. It swings around again and then the mother grabs it and holds it. She doesn't let go.

You leave the orangutans and head back towards the front of the zoo. You stop and look at a toucan and go through another aviary. This aviary is filled with an abundance of beautiful birds. One of the birds you see is a green and gray dove. The dove is about the size of a chicken. It can barely balance itself on the railing on the walkway. When you finish going through the aviary, you have to go through two sets of double doors to make sure the birds stay in.

You get back to the front of the zoo and head over to another section of the zoo, with the reptiles and amphibians. When you get there, you enter a brick building. It has a walkway around the outside with a wall around the walkway. You walk around and see all sorts of vipers, an anaconda, and lizards. There is even the nationally known white cobra that escaped her owner. Luckily, she was recaptured and placed in the zoo.

You exit out the back. You walk down some steps and on each side of you there is a playpen of sorts with some turtles and tortoises. The turtles and tortoises are of various species. Some are the size of a woman's hand and others are bigger than a plate.