Lions and Tigers and Bears – Oh My! Zoo 2 | A book, coffee, and the park

The main part of going to a zoo is of course to see the animals. I find it so interesting that zoos in the middle of a city seem to transport you to a completely different place. I forgot that we were in the middle of Cincinnati, but to the residents that live within close proximity of the zoo I wonder what it is like to randomly hear an elephant, or a lion roar in the morning? I remember when the circus came to town not too long ago that I was taken by surprised when I hear an elephant on my way out of work. To ensure we saw everything the Cincinnati Zoo had to offer we checked our map and made a plan to head out after lunch.
One of the first places we went after lunch was the Cat Canyon. The path lead us into the Night Predators house, now this next picture is quite scary, Kristen took this picture and did a stare down with this animal. To be honest I’m not sure what this animal was but I do know two things, 1) it’s a predator for sure and 2) if it ever got out it would track us down. At first I thought this was fake because of how still it was, but no, it is real. Outside of the Night Predator house we saw a mountain lion; again, seeing these animals up close really gives you a sense that these are really wild animals. Cognitively I know this, but seeing them stare me down is something different. The next animal was a white tiger! This took me back to when I was about 11 or 12 years ago and my parents and I took a road trip to California and we stopped off in Las Vegas for a couple of days. I remember seeing the white tigers there and it was awesome! This tiger is a little blurry but he was sleeping anyways. All of the big cats in the Cat Canyon that were awake; they were alert and all seemed to just stare right at you. There was a large viewing area in the tiger enclosure; the two tigers were right up next to the glass walking back and forth. The last cat in this area was the snow leopard.
At work I had a conversation with a coworker after looking at the pictures I took of two different rhinoceros, I was convinced that they were some kind of modern day dinosaurs. I googled it, and was wrong, not this first nor the last time I’m sure, but look at these guys!

I found the orangutan to be the most interesting primate we saw at this zoo, the gorillas were lying down and hiding, which is understandable I would probably do the same if I was in their situation. There was a baby primate sleeping which was really cute!

This orangutan kind of reminded me of big foot in Harry and the Hendersons.

There were some monkeys that were having a blast swinging around, to which my friend Carolyn mentioned that she wished she looked that cool on the monkey bars…

Lions are the King of the jungle! And these two lions at were taking that responsibly with ease and grace expected of one in power. They were taking a power nap!!

Now an animal I would expect to be taking a nap was ACTIVE! I mean we watched this sloth move non-stop for a good 15 minutes! For some reason I thought sloths just kind of slept a lot and didn’t move, but this little guy proved that thought wrong.

Do you know what Kristen’s favorite animal is? I didn’t until this trip, it is a polar bear!!

The first time we walked by the polar bears they were sleeping, so we went and saw the lions, which were also sleeping. When we came back the polar bears were active!!

We walked through the childrens petting zoo, and near the end was some penguins! A couple of years ago there was an event downtown, and they brought a penguin! I got to pet a penguin, they even had stickers that you got to wear after you petted the little guy!! And yes, I was in my 20s when this happened, but you better believe I wore that sticker with pride! This little penguin was splashing around in the water, so cute right?! Kyle thought he was trying to splash us, I don’t know but either way he was adorable!

As a little girl I remember going to Brookfield Zoo that we would walk in and take the first right we could and there would be the zebras! These zebras were pretty much chilling like I remember the other zebras doing at Brookfield.

Interesting fact… I went to a Renaissances Fair in Wisconsin several years ago and got to pet a zebra, and ride an elephant! Elephants might have been one of the last animals we visited, but it is Carolyn’s favorite animal!! We spend a decent amount of time hanging out at this exhibit. It took us about 15 minutes to realize that there was more than one elephant in the habitat! There were in fact 3 elephants in there!!