zoopolusa saturday

It's been a very full and eventful, if damp, day today.

There were some minor changes to the usual routine this morning... Ma was dropping her car in at the mechanic, but she stopped off here first just in case my car wouldn't start.

Thankfully it started first time no problem... so I followed her down the road and we headed over to the shops after she dropped her car off.

Shopping ensued... then we stopped off at the bank so I could drop in my $1400 worth of $1 and $2 coins to help fill in the rather large dent in my bank account at the moment.

Afterwards we waited for the mechanic to call us. Which would have been fine, except for the fact that we were planning to go to the zoo... and wanted to head off as early as possible... so of course the mechanic didn't call when he said he would.

After half an hour of waiting we decided to just head down there to see if the car was ready, and if not, at least we'd be in the neighbourhood when it was. Turns out it was ready, he just hadn't called... grrr.

We dropped Ma's car off at my place and then headed to the zoo...

It's been a while since we've been to the zoo... there's a whole new entrance, they have pandas now, lots of things have been moved around...

It was also the zoo's Animal Enrichment Day... so they give the animals extra stuff to play with and teach the public about what they normally do to stimulate them... or something... I'm not completely sure, but it was a good excuse to go.

I may have gotten a little bit over-excited with taking photos though... 550 shots... and about 150 of those were of the orangutans...

Because it was a special day (at least I'm guessing so), entry to the giant pandas was free... which was good... well, good in so much as I don't think that I would have wanted to pay to see them... it was all fairly anti-climatic really. Possibly that's because we only really saw them either inside or as they were headed inside...

It wasn't an idea day... I mean the cloud helped with photographing things without shadows, but it was fairly cold, there were a number of the animals that had obviously figured "screw this" and were just curled up into a little ball, or in their sleeping boxes with the heat lamps. Not that I blame them... especially given the periodic drizzle.

We didn't quite manage to see everything... partially because my camera battery gave up (so it would seem I can take about 825 shots before I have to charge it again)...

If we hadn't spent quite so much time with each of the animals we probably would have gotten around more of the zoo, but the same thing happened that pretty much always happens when we go to the zoo... I got entranced with various animals, and since I had the SLR, I could just keep taking photos until I got shots like the orangutan portrait above.

In the end we stayed for about three and a half hours... I think you'd kind of need to stick around for the whole day to really make the most of the entrance fee, but I had a great day, even with the drizzle and having to deal with the general public...

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