Who-who, Moo, Tweet-tweet, Hee-haw, Rar

We went to the zoo today. They renamed it and they are revamping it. I like what they are doing with the animals now. It's always made me sad to see animals living in little cages that were not stimulating them. I know the zoo has tried hard updating and adding to what they had- giving the animals toys, etc. I'm glad that they have really vamped up their efforts lately. They are really doing a lot to help the animals feel more at home. They are making whole new areas that have more room and give the animals more to do. The new polar bear exhibit is a little puzzling to me. It's mostly brown dirt. I know they can't have real snow here year round, but it just doesn't seem right. The polar bears are always rolling in the dirt and they look brown. Oh well, I don't want them walking around on concrete all the time, so I guess dirt is what's best for them.
They closed the front part of the zoo for renovation. I don't know what they are doing with those animals, but if I were in charge I would have other habitats ready for them on the other side of the zoo before I closed off their section. We didn't get to see some of my favorites- tigers, gibbons(aka those really cool small monkeys), flamingos, peacocks. I had been promising Ryan tigers since we started getting ready in the morning. I'm not sure he noticed that we didn't see them.
Ryan had a lot of fun(when he wasn't sleeping). The cow in the petting zoo was right next to the fence, so we went up to it. The cow put it's nose right on the fence at Ryan's level. Ryan would giggle at the cow and come up while I was petting it, but he didn't pet it himself. He was being really cute smiling and pointing at it, so I backed up to take a picture. He ran backwards giggling all the way. I tried coaxing him up to pet it. He would take a few slow steps forward and then run backwards again. I decided to move on without my picture of the adorable interaction of cow and boy. We moved on and looked at some more of the petting zoo animals. I noticed the donkey was close to the fence. We went over and Ryan hee-hawed at the donkey. I held him up to the fence and he touched the donkey on the nose. He laughed and laughed then he did this scrunched-up-nose-exaggerated-breath thing he does when he wants to smell something...I'm not sure what that was about-draw your own conclusions. Then we went in the goat area and boy did he have fun in there! He counted goats, he petted goats, he climbed up logs to get to goats and he did a lot of pointing and laughing with glee. He really liked the tails. He thought it was funny when they wagged back and forth. He eventually did pet the cow- he almost went through the fence to pet the cow! He took a long nap, but I woke him up to see the giraffes. Then we went back through the chimpanzee house and saw the monkeys with long white tails, the lemurs and the chimps. Ryan loved the monkeys! During the whole trip Ryan was making animals sounds at the appropriate animals(hence the title). I think he especially liked the owls. He who-whoed at them a lot. He even remembered where they were when we came up another way-he pointed and who-whoed in the direction they were even though we couldn't see them from where we were.
The zoo has this new exhibit where you can go in a bird area with parakeets, cockatiels and some sort of parrot(I think). Zach got to feed the birds. He had some land on him. I think he liked it even if he looked really nervous. One parakeet tried to make its escape in my mom's purse. Zach also got to go to an animal show and at the end he got to pet a penguin. Zach of course has been to the zoo tons of times, so it wasn't as amazing to him as it was to Ryan who hasn't been since he was too young to really remember.
Pictures tomorrow.
zoo