Papa's Visit - The Cincinnati Zoo

Tuesday before Thanksgiving we decided to head down to Cincinnati to go the Zoo and pick up a Tur-duc-hen at Jungle Jims. The zoo was neat because it seems to be smack in the center of town, but once inside you forget about the surrounding city.
The zoo was huge! There were all different types of 'houses'. But the 'houses' had tons of animals inside or around the building. Like the cat house had a lot of different types of cats. The insect house had many, many, many insects. So we were there for 4 hours and still didn't see everything!! Trouble wanted to go the zoo for his birthday. So here are the pictures:
Papa as a zookeeper: Beautiful Eagles:

A snake eating a mouse:

Gila Monster:

Lizard hanging upside down:

There seemed to be quite a few mom/kid combos. The kids got a kick out of seeing the babies with their mommies. Here is one mom with baby picture:

With moustache:

These things were huge (please excuse my lack of knowledge of all the animals):

The nocturnal house is always my favorite. Probably because I'm a bit nocturnal myself. I'm just impressed with their special adaptations.

Backpack a bit tired, cold and hungry.

The zoo was proud of their ownership of this Indian Rhino. He was a bit bored!

White Tiger behaving so elegantly:

There were quite a few animals that stared right us. Obviously they are use to zoo life. In Minot during off peak days the animals were acting like they belonged to a circus. I guess they missed humans, so when we did come along they were excited!

The kids, oh so excited :-)

One bored lion. Can you see the figure 8 he has worn in the ground from pacing??

We were humored by these guys...or the other way around! This one came down to the ground by Backpack and tapped on the glass and put his hands on the glass where Backpacks hands were.

Growing up we had a dog named Butch. He was a lab/chow mix. he looked just like a brown bear, with a long curled tail. So imagine this animals a few pounds lighter, black nosed and a tail and that was our dog. We'd had him for 13 years.

Picture of a Kookaburra, just in case we didn't find one in Australia!

A sign of a good trip!

We left the zoo and headed to Jungle Jim's for the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving meal! It was already late, so we didn't get to tour the store. We made it home safely to continue our adventures with Papa.