Drive-Thru Zoo

Kristi suggested a wonderful activity for us... the Drive-Thru Zoo located in Gentry, AR. It was a fun outing. She asked the older kids if they wanted to come along and Makenzie said no... she was afraid of the emus.

Peek-a-boo emu staring into the van... who is watching whom?   Tap... tap... tap... is anyone in there?

Their larger cousins, the ostriches were right there at the entrance too... hoping for a hand out. Umm... not today!

We had a beautiful sunny day and most of the animals were out and active. We saw a whole pack of little deer creatures but they were all pretty shy about coming up to the van. Our next visitor was this gazelle. What a beautiful creature...

I love the texture of its horns.

Living in the same drive-thru enclosure was a herd of zebra. I LOVE zebra. As a little girl I always wanted one. It is just recently that I've realized that some zebras are white with black stripes and others are black with white stripes... and some have big bums and the stripes do nothing to minimize that fact! (bwahahahaha)

We saw the white bison from the highway driving in so I was excited to see them up close... mama and baby...

WELL! perhaps not this close!

We were supposed to *STAY IN THE CAR (which we did) WITH THE WINDOWS UP (hey! do you know how awkward it is to shoot through car windows?)*

What the heck is this? Cross-breeding?  A long-horned beefalo?

And this??? DEFINITELY INBREEDING! Poor little freak of nature!

The next noteworthy beast was this pack-o-piglets! Explain to me how such cute little babies turn into ugly razorbacks! (Oops! Did I really say that in Arkansas?)

Further in our journey we got to a sign saying "Horses, donkeys and deer are mowers, not dinner!" This was outside the big cat area. But you notice the guy is hoarking giant hunks of meat into the carnivores... so who is the sign for? The cats? The visitors? Or just to make the horses, donkeys and deer feel better about themselves?

This snow tiger was waiting patiently... in its watering trough with the hose running on it... for it's dinner.

By now Maddie was asking when we would get to the *by-yarn* (and the rest of us were wondering how far to the potty, no stopping in the bushes here!)... we arrived just in time to save us all... Jackson immediately made friends with the resident *Wildcat*- such a pretty calico girl.

I love how the shadow looks like Jackson is giving Wildcat a kiss.

We also say this precocious little fellow...

What a cute baby... I talked to him and he meowed and chortled right back... Can I take him home?

Not far from this sweet baby is, well, an obnoxious chimpanzee... is that redundant? Larry disappeared as soon as we walked up to his cage while Lula sat in the corner. He did a little boogy dance on his raised platform... then he started swinging back and forth displaying his manliness on each forward swing... we should have known that something was coming when Lula grabbed her blanket and crawled up to her platform and hid under said blanket. (Lula says- Look out of the way!) After a particularly violent forward thrust Larry spewed water out of his mouth at us. (I suppose we can be glad he wasn't like the chimps in Madagascar, "If you have any poo, fling it now!"

I asked everyone to gather so I could get a photo... Jackson decided he was a monkey...

And here are Kristi, Maddie and Grampy...

A good time was had by all... especially Larry!