We spent last Saturday at the Louisville Zoo. Peter decided he liked it much better than the Cincinnati Zoo. I think that was in part because parking was easier. In fact, it was free! It was a warm day, but we all had a good time. I think it is a mark of a good zoo to have lots of things for kids to climb on. So, you can see the girls on a Rhino here. They also climbed on statues of an elephant and a tortoise.

What I thought was great was that they had "zoo keeper's notes" which told something about the specific animals we were looking at, not just the species. One told about a bird that had just hatched earlier this summer and was not nearly full grown. Another (sadly) talked about how one of the animals had an incurable form of cancer, which was why it was so thin. We also learned that the bald eagles at the zoo did not have to be netted in because they both had arrived after they had a wing permanently damaged by a gunshot.

The girls, of course, enjoyed themselves. Sammy was fascinated watching the meercats eat live crickets. (We saw some small birds join them at feeding time, and learned that if they didn't hustle out of there with their lunch the meercats might eat the birds instead!). She was also a fan of the penguins and danced for them a bit. It took us a while to find the penguins. For obvious reasons, they are kept indoors. However, we were walking through the building for a while and every room was a sauna! The one other air conditioned room though was for the orangutan. Charlotte was entranced! She just watched and watched for a long time, and finally we had to pull her away to go find the penguins!

While we were watching the jaguar, Charlotte noted that "Diego has a jaguar". (Diego is a cartoon, cousin of Dora). I pointed out that his jaguar was a baby and that grown-up jaguars do not make good pets. When I explained why, Charlotte looked terrified, and clung tightly to me, so I told her that's why there was a fence between us. For the next several days Charlie would somberly announce to us, "Grown up Jaguars are not good pets. That's why they have a fence. The jaguar stays on that side and we stay on this side."

When we went into the gift shop, of course they had stuffed animals of practically every animal at the zoo. Charlotte came across a pile of frogs that looked much like the stuffed one we got here when she mastered potty training. "This is just like Dagio" she announced. (Incidentally, the frog is named after the term, "Adagio" she hears on Little Einsteins. I guess some cartoons are educational!) Then she asked, "Can I carry it around with me?" Sure. "Another one, can I carry this one too?" I guess so. "A tiger tiger! Can I carry this too?" At some point I had to put a stop to it, so I think I limited her to carrying four stuffed animals. Of course she wanted to take one home, but her room is packed with stuffed animals she never plays with! But we did find a magnet with her name on it (for some reason, Charlotte is really hard to find).

The girls also picked out some post cards. After Charlie Dot carefully taped hers into her notebook at home, she was "writing" as she talked about the pictures. At one point we overheard her dictate "And we saw two tiger tiger roars, which is my favorite animal."

On a side note, I just have to brag a little bit. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to Sammy, who had not yet started first grade. We were talking about people sharing something, I don't remember what. I asked he off-handedly, "So if there were ten of them and 5 people, how many would each person have?" She paused to think, but never lifted her fingers to count. In about 15 seconds she asserted "two." The kid intuits division. :)