Zoo

We went to the zoo today. We had been avoiding it because we'd heard that it was a bit depressing because of the size of the enclosures. But with the day ahead of us and not wanting to drive an hour to the aquarium, I asked the kids if they'd like to go to the zoo, which they responded very excitedly... so there we went. I'd say depressing is an awful understatement. (To touch on the images above, you can see that the poor bats have to crawl around on the floor to get to their food tin. I mean, really, could they not place it up in a tree? And the poor bear... he was a loon for sure. He walked in circles around his tiny enclosure peeing all over himself. The raccoon- I thought he was dead. And that poor lion... the king of the jungle... mocked in a tiny cement cage. Is this really any way to treat animals??) I'm glad that my kids are young enough not to realize that the animals are going loony from being in those tiny cages. Monkey did notice that the animals were walking in circles and looked sad. But he had a good time nonetheless. The enclosure that was the largest seemed like it used to be an orangutan habitat, but had since been overthrown by goats (and had never been cleaned). and all I could think of in the bird/bat house was avian flu. I'm a bit of a germ freak, and this place certainly grossed me out. However, It was amazing to see the animals so close up. Never in the US would you be able to get so close to a hippo or near enough for a monkey to throw poo at you. We visited the Taipei zoo back in May, which we thought was a very nice zoo, but most of the habitats were empty. Maybe we should send our animals over to Taiwan to live. Overall the experience to the zoo was disheartening. But its' checked off of my list.