Category Archives: Zoo

Fantastic Saturday

I had a rather busy and active weekend. Saturday morning, I got a call from my mother at 8:30. My parents were on their way to the Rochester area. They had my brother’s daughters with them, and they were all coming up to spend part of the day at Seneca Park Zoo. So I got up, showered, shaved, and grabbed a quick breakfast before they got to my apartment. Once they arrived, I jumped in the van, and we were off.

I haven’t seen Terry’s girls for at least seven years, when they made their last trip out to visit my parents. Since that time, Christine and Val have both graduated from high school and grown into a couple of great young women. It was nice to be able to spend some time with them.

We had a great day at the zoo, too. Due to the relatively low temperatures of the day, many of the animals were out and about. We even managed to get there while the one zoo keeper was putting the arctic wolves’ food in their exhibit. So we waited until she was done and were rewarded with watching the wolves search around the exhibit for their food.

Val and Christine were both impressed with the tiger triplets, which are now just over two years old. They were quite shocked when they learned this as I pointed out that the cubs (already considerable in size) get bigger. I made a point of taking them over to the Sasha’s cage so they could meet the triplets’ father. Needless to say, while they were already impressed with the size of the young tigers, seeing how much bigger a full-grown adult can be was quite an eye-opener for them.

I think everyone’s favorite exhibit on Saturday was the polar bear exhibit. The big white furballs were quite active. They had pulled their blue plastic barrels into the water and were playing with them there. At one point, the one bear was hanging onto his barrel with all four paws, floating underneath it. I’m hoping my father got a picture so that I can post it later. Sadly, I ran out of the house without my own camera.

On a sad note, I was quite disappointed to hear that Ariel, one of the zoo’s sea lions, died sometime this past winter. I originally saw Ariel and Flounder (who is still at the zoo) doing tricks last summer. We attended the same show (which has been renamed a “feeding”) Saturday, where we met the exhibit’s new addition, the year old Puff. The zoo is working on training Puff to do some of the tricks Ariel used to do (Flounder simply has never show interest in doing so), and I look forward to seeing what he learns in the future.

After we left the zoo, we headed over to Pittsford to try and find the new Cheesecake Factory store that’s opening soon. Val works as a trainer for the chain and thought one of her coworkers might be there training people for the store opening, so she wanted to stop in and say hi. Unfortunately, said coworker wasn’t there, but Val got to see the new store anyway. Apparently, she has a goal to see all of the stores the chain has.

After that, I had my parents drop me off at Psychic’s Thyme so I could hang out with Michele, Belinda, and Char, who were all working. We had a pretty good time, though it was a slow business day. Afterwards, Belinda, Michele and I went out for dinner (where I was rewarded with the perfect view of one of the waiter’s butts as he cleaned off the table next to us) and followed up with ice cream.

Originally, I had planned on going to the Pride Festival over at Village Gate. But by the time we were done with ice cream, I decided that I was tired from a long day and decided to go home.

On Sunday, I went to the Pride Picnic, which I will talk about in a future post.

Another trip to the zoo

This morning, I decided to make another trip to Seneca Park Zoo, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite spots to visit. In fact, today, I decided to pay for a membership. My annual membership fee gives me (and one adult guest, as well as my guest’s children, if any) free admission any of the 364 days a year that they’re open. I felt it was well worth it. And the money goes to help take care of the animals and other conservation projects.

Of coure, while there, I took some pictures with my camera. Again, I’m not going to post all of them (I took thirty in all). But I thought I’d share a few, just to give everyone a taste of my morning.

This next picture is of Ariel, one of the sea lions they have at the zoo:
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Ariel has a playmate named Flounder. They were born about sixteen years ago (that’s about the time that Disney’s animation, The Little Mermaid, came out in case anyone’s wondering. I actually went back to this exhibit an hour after I took these pictures, as I discovered that they were giving a demonstration of Ariel’s and Flounder’s training at 11:30 this morning. I did not take pictures of the demonstration, as I wanted to be able to focus on enjoying my own experience of it. I hope to ge pictures of future demonstrations, however. The demonstration itself was quite interesting, as they explained some of the reasons they train the sea lions and what the process involves. Also, they explained some of the differences between a seal and a sea lion.

Not to far from Ariel and Flounder’s display, the polar bears have their exhibit. I was able to snap this excellent picture of the one polar bear going for a swim:
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I got the distinct impression that he was checking me out as much as I was checking him out.

Surprisingly, the tigers were out in full force about the time I was getting ready to leave. So I was able to snap a couple of pictures. This young guy reminded me of a larger version of my little Precious, the way he was playing around in this tube:
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Of course, the difference between him and Precious is that he’s big enough that he could do more than just nip my hand when he got hungry.

And of course, one of the other tigers was having fun playing king of the hill:
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Overall, it was an enjoyable experience today.

Pictures from the zoo

This morning, I decided to go to Seneca Park Zoo. Except for the fact that several school disctricts had decided to take their kids on a field trip to the zoo today, it was a marvelous experience. And even the presence of that many small children didn’t matter much. I was there when the doors opened and was able to keep ahead of the children for the first fifteen minutes to half hour.

The weather and time of day made it the perfect trip. Most of the animals were out and active, which meant I have some great pictures. For now, I’m going to stick with three of my favorites.

I got to the penguin exhibit just two minutes before the zoo staff fed the tuxedoed wonders. As such, I stuck around and got a great picture of them eating. Notice the penguin on the left with the fish hanging out his mouth.

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The leopard was eating, too. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good look at his meal.

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I think the cougar wanted to eat me.

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Thank goodness that glass pane was between us!