February Zoo Fun

Noah has Thursday and Friday off this week. This morning, the boys had dentist appointments. Both did wonderfully, and we found out Noah currently has SIX loose teeth! Two are quite obvious, but the other four not so much. I’m hoping once he loses the two top front teeth (the most loose), they start to come in before he starts losing the ones on either side of that!

After the dentist, we made our way to the zoo. It had been a few of months since we’d been there, and there’s plenty to do inside, so we bundled up and headed in. It was a beautifully sunny day, so the cold didn’t seem quite so cold. We had practically the whole place to ourselves! We didn’t see any other person in the monkey house, so we took our time watching the bonobos and orangutans, including baby Mahal (one of Caden’s “best friends”).

Then we went over to the “fish house”. On the way in, we watched the peacocks for a little while. They were out of sorts because there were some people cutting down tree branches, making a lot of noise. We got inside where we saw one worker, but no other zoo visitors. For those of you who may not be terribly familiar with the Milwaukee County Zoo, the fish house is very dark, and it’s a circle shape with “Lake Wisconsin” in the middle. So you can’t see across the building. On a regular day at the zoo, it’s very chaotic, and very loud in there. It is very simple to lose your child, and very stressful. On Thursday, it was blissful. The only sounds: a chirping cricket (one that had so far avoided ingestion by some reptile) and our voices. We checked out the poisonous dart frogs, the king cobra, the anaconda, the Chinese crocodile, some turtles, lots of fish, and Digger, the Grand Cayman blue iguana.

After the fish house, we made our way down toward the camels, hoping to find the snack bar open so we could have a little something to eat. No luck, so we skipped the Big Cat house and headed to the Dairy Barn. All of the cows were laying down (weird) as we walked by. In an adjoining room, there are trucks the boys like to play on. We sat and had our snacks, watching a video about how they milk the cows at the zoo. It’s actually pretty cool. It’s the only working dairy farm in the city of Milwaukee. I’d never really thought of that before!

We made our way to the entrance, stopping in the gift shop to look around and try on some shark masks. It was time for lunch, then, so we had a special stop at McDonald’s. Overall, it was a great morning!