Jill's Journal: It’s an elephant pedicure! Seriously.
For nearly a century, the San Diego Zoo has enthralled visitors to Southern California with a stunning array of wildlife. Consistently ranked at the very top of zoos in the U.S., the San Diego Zoo covers 100 acres and boasts over 4,000 animals of over 800 species. It’s also one of the most progressive zoos in the world, having pioneered such innovations as cageless exhibits. It is also one of only four U.S. zoos approved to loan giant pandas from China and has a successful panda breeding program (all surviving baby pandas must eventually be sent back to China).
April and Cat joined the girls and me yesterday for an absolutely wonderful day at the Zoo. And actually, they didn’t just join us…April has annual passes to the Zoo and had free tickets for all four of us! That was an amazing and fantastic treat and surprise; needless to say, we bought lunch. We were there from opening until closing, making it a long day, but we had such a great time together.
I’m convinced April missed her calling and should ditch her travel career for a new life as a zookeeper. Now I love animals and our girls love animals, but April brings a love of wild animals to a whole ‘nother level. To the average person (me included!), a dozen different types of antelope all start to look alike. The same goes for bears that are black. Not to April. She could rattle off the names and many specifics of each species we passed without batting an eye. It was impressive, to say the least.
Our girls absolutely love Cat. My only complaint is that there’s only one of her. My girls displayed plenty of good, old-fashioned sibling rivalry as they all wanted her attention. Cat never has to doubt her popularity as long as these sisters are around!
Humorously, one of the highlights for all four of the little girls was baby ducks. Giant pandas, elephants, giraffes, meerkats, tapirs? Nah. Baby ducks. April and I got a good laugh out of that.
Exquisite animals, beautiful weather, fantastic company. It doesn’t get much better than that.
