Chad goes to the zoo!

Chad went to the zoo yesterday!

The NC Zoo is about an hour from us and includes African exhibits, North American exhibits, and for a limited time, a dinosaur section.  I think I heard rumors that an Asian section is in production.  The dinosaurs are only there through October, and children under 2 get into the zoo for free, so those were two very good reasons to take a trip out there this summer.  We only tackled Africa and the dinosaurs this time.  (North America just isn't as exciting.  No offense to the beavers and wolves.)

 Checking out the lemurs.  They were pretty playful.

 

I think they were looking at the lions here.  When we left this exhibit, Chad said, "Bye-bye, roars!"

 Flamingos!!!!!

There was a sign near the flamingo patch asking us to be quiet because this is their mating season, and loud noises excite the flamingos too much.  I was really hoping to see a flamingo mating ritual, but I guess they save that for after hours.

The elephant was pretty close to us, but Chad was unimpressed.

 

I think Chad's favorite was the gorilla.  We got there as a gorilla was sitting right next to the glass, and then he stood up and ambled past us.  Chad made a little "Roar," at him. There was a baby gorilla who was only a month old, but he was slipping with his mom.

We took a break for lunch, and offered Chad chicken tenders, a side of fries, and a banana.  You can all probably guess which of those three items he ate, and which were left for Andy to finish up.
As Chad was ignoring his lunch, we saw the carousel, and he got really excited.  So he and I went for his first ride!

 We started on one of the Chad-sized animals.

I had two tickets for the carousel, but it turns out parents don't need a ticket to stand next to their kid.  So we got off the gator, raced around to the line, and got back on for another ride.
After mastering the alligator, Chad was ready to try out a bigger animal.

He got a kick out of being taller than me.  I told him in about two more years he'll catch up to me in height anyway.

He was such a little ham, and waved at passerby as we went around and around.

We then had a mini crisis, because Chad felt very strongly that if TWO rides on the carousel were fun, then a THIRD would be even better.  That meant it was time to distract him with some dinosaurs!
The first dino was a climb-able T-rex for cute photos, but Chad was afraid to sit on its back.  Instead, he gave its teeth a thorough examination.

 Future dentist

A T-rex's teeth were seven inches long, and were replaced if they fell out.  Just some dinosaur trivia for your day.

The other dinos moved and roared and two of them spit water.  Chad may have been a little freaked out by some of them.  Or maybe he was still angry about not getting a third spin on the carousel.

Not too sure about this exhibit.

This is what he was staring at.

Of course, we need a picture of Steggy!

This guy was called a Therizinosaurus, which means "scythe lizard".  His claws could be three feet long.  Neither of us had heard of him before.  We think he was made up.

Finally, we stopped by the giraffe feeding station, to give Turbo the giraffe some leaves!

Hello, Turbo!

Have a leaf!

We went through the line twice, but each time Chad dropped his leaf just before Turbo grabbed hold of it.  I'm not too worried- there were plenty of other zoo-goers feeding him leaves, so he couldn't have been starving.

Chad was pooped from all the excitement. He must have worked up an appetite, because he actually ate some of the pasta we offered him for dinner, instead of just asking us for "More mop?"  (Mop = milk.)  And I didn't hear any screaming last night, so the dinosaur nightmares couldn't have been too bad.