Zoo Fun

This weekend was my annual trip to Lincoln Park Zoo with my nephew and my mom. This year, Sister & Brother-in-Law came along as well since my baby nephew, Ben, was going as well. Quite a group!

I go back and forth on whether or not the zoo is a horrible place where the animals are taken out of their natural habitat, la la la, but once a year I enjoy the fun that is seeing my nephew (now nephews!) enjoy the zoo.

For the first time in the three years we've been going (Jack's only 4 1/2!), we saw almost the whole zoo. He usually gets tired are just a few exhibits, but this year we went through just about the whole thing and even made it to the farm. Monkeys, zebras, penguins, polar bears, giraffes. Good stuff. It's kind of strange to think that these animals all live in the middle of the city next to a big lake, but they seem to be...ok.

There were two animals that were a little worrisome. One was a zebra that has seizures (we didn't see any seizures but it was laying down on it's side which was a little odd) and a gibbon monkey that lost one of it's arm because a visitor to the zoo threw something and he tried to grab it. That was sad but he was swinging around and seemed to adapt pretty well to only having one arm!

The monkeys and apes were pretty fun. I never really liked monkeys before, but this year they were neat! They were all playing and jumping around and having a good time so it made them a little more interesting than the lions that just lay in the sun all day.

It was a fun day! It makes you realize that you need to play tourist in your own town more often.

(I need to update these photos. I had a chance to edit them but I haven't posted them here yet. Check my flickr site if you wanna see more and better pics. :)