In which animals are pointed at, and mouths hang agape

As luck would have it, Hollie and I both had off work yesterday. It's a rare occurrence these days, so we try to take advantage of it any way we can. The weather was nice, and LG has been in good spirits, sleeping well, eating whatever is in front of her, so we decided to make Thursday our first family trip to the Philadelphia Zoo.

I have to say, it was a great day. LG didn't smile too much, but that's probably because she spent of the bulk of her time staring at animals with a face that seemed to say, "What on earth is that thing?" That and the fact that she was interested enough in what was going on to go almost five hours without a nap tells me that she had a pretty good time.

Among other things, we were particularly excited for her to see a polar bear, since she has a counting book with a polar bear on the cover that she will not put down. So we went to the polar bear exhibit pretty early on.

It took her a few minutes to see the polar bear laying at the back of the exhibit, mostly because she spent her time pointing at the little girl just out of frame who was making faces against the glass.

But when we did see the polar bear...
"Guys, guys, guys! I saw a polar bear! And it yawned at me!!!!"

Here, she's either pointing at a giraffe, or a rhino's butt. She was equally intrigued by both.
Shortly thereafter, we hit the highlight of the trip, if only because of how close LG got to the animals. The McNeil Avian Center, which opened not that long ago, has a bunch of birds that you can practically touch.
Seriously. She is wicked close to that buff crested bustard (shut your mouth!). What? I'm just talkin' bout bustards!

Then she kept trying to chase after these victoria crowned pigeons.
They're behind a small fence here, but they wandered out onto the trail in the middle of the habitat, and she really wanted to get after them.

I didn't get any good pictures of her and the cats at Big Cat Falls, but Hollie snapped a nice one of LG and me underneath the titular falls.
Is it just me, or does the name Big Cat Falls not evoke a waterfall? Every time I say it, I picture a lion stumbling across the savannah, tripping over a scraggly downed tree, all scored to some goofy music and a laugh track a la America's Funniest Home Videos.

Her next up-close-and-personal encounter was with a squirrel monkey at the primate house.
This little guy was eating apples out of that popcorn tub. I think LG wanted one. (An apple, not a squirrel monkey.)

I don't know if LG wanted this gorilla to do something other than pick its nose and burp, but if that's the sort of thing she was interested it, she wasn't disappointed.
One of the last places we hit was the reptile house. I don't know if she picked this up somewhere else, or if Hollie just taught it to her, but LG made hissing noises the entire time we were in there. It started off with snakes, but by the time we were done, she had hissed at turtles, frogs, and mudpuppies, too.
All in all, we had a great time, and I think she did, too.
Although I still don't know what kind of primate this is supposed to be.

For more pictures of our trip to the zoo, including a picture of me being accosted by a puppet, check out the album on my facebook page.