Zoo Days

Today was a day tinted in nostalgia. I find that whenever I make a trip to the Toronto Zoo it brings up sepia filtered memories of my first trip there when I was very young. However, just like everything else in life, each trip also shows that the Zoo has changed a little, either with new exhibits or just with reconstruction of old exhibits, etc. Either way, it was a fun trip down to the Zoo with Geoff, who had never been before.

Now, for anyone who hasn't been to the Toronto Zoo it is an enormous place geographically. It sprawls over several square km's of Toronto hinterland where it started who knows how many years ago. I wouldn't recommend trying to do it in one today, but unlike the Museums in Ottawa, it IS doable as long as you don't mind lots of walking. We got there at 12pm and we stayed until it closed at 6pm, but if you went for when it opened you'd have more than enough time to see animals like this:

He's got an everything only a mother could love

We started off going towards the Indo-Malaysian Pavilion, which was full of birds, monkeys and other animals that could be found in that area of the world. It was really neat because like a bunch of their other pavilions they had areas where birds were free flying throughout the enclosure. If you were lucky you might have been able to take a picture with lots of detail. I mean, they don't fly at you or anything, as their likely super afraid of everyone, but it's nicer than looking at them through mesh caging.

These are 'Chinese' Ducks. I'm not sure what makes them any different from regular ducks.

This Pavilion also housed a series of great apes. The most entertaining of them being the Orangutan's. Although they weren't doing very much when we saw them, the zoo keeper was there feeding them, and it made for an entertaining show. They knew where the food was coming from, and the older one even mimed an action showing it wanted more food. It's shocking to think that there is such a minuscule amount of genome separating us from them.

We've all been there. The magical mix of amazement and 'OMG THIS IS DELICIOUS'

After that we made our way over to the African exhibit but along the way there were a few outdoor Indo-Malaysian enclosures the peaked my interest. One of them being one of the tigers that can be found in that part of the world. Now I had hoped it would be doing cat things, but really all it did was look menacing. While it stalked over to the visitor area of the enclosure, it veered off at the last minute and decided to eat grass. In the end it turned out to be not so menacing at all. Also, not all was lost, right before we left for the day we had a look at the Snow Leopards, and they TOTALLY did cat things. 

Oh please don't eat me! Oh wait, you're more interested in grass than my blood? Alright then.

We got over to the African Exhibit and saw lots of wonderful animals. However along the way we also saw a Peacock. The funny things about Peacocks at the Toronto Zoo is that they're like Easter eggs from Video games. They don't have their own enclosures, they just sort of wander around the park. You might be in a pavilion, look out a window and PEACOCK! (Which is where I saw the first one) Sometimes you'll be travelling from zone to zone and bam! Peacock. They just sort of wonder out from nowhere. Today I managed to see about 5 of them. Seeing as I usually only see 1-2 a trip, HIGH SCORE.

More entertaining than the Hot Coffee Patch from GTA: Vice City

What came next was the Rhinoceros enclosure. Now the Rhino's were pretty cool, but there was this side-show of Canadian Geese that were also in the enclosure (Note: They were in practically EVERY outdoor enclosure) and they seemed to be having some sort of turf war. I was trying to take a picture of these two Rhino's rolling around in the mud, and these three geese come flying into the picture, honking away at each other. It was quite funny because they'd be chasing each other around in the pond, and they'd get too close to the Rhino's, they'd come over and scare them away, and then they'd slowly creep back towards them. It was a cycle that repeated for as long as I cared to watch.

It was like a more hilarious version of an old man with kids playing on his lawn

Finally, we got to the Hippopotamus. Now these things look adorable, but if you do some closer research you realize their quite terrifying. In Africa, where they are found, they are known to ram small fishing boats and devouring their crew. They will also chase you across land and gore you, for no reason other than you looked at it funny! Fortunately this one was sealed away from an enclosure. Unfortunately it realized this and completely ignored the world around it.

About 95% of all Zoo animals look like this. I think it's a mass animal conspiracy for Zoo's to go bankrupt and get them released back into the wild.

Finally, if someone tells you to beat later to avoid traffic, don't put much thought into it, in Toronto there appears to be only two types of road settings, heavy traffic and 'WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PEOPLE ON THE HIGHWAY AT 11AM and 7PM' traffic. So it really doesn't matter when you leave, just know it will take an hour to get there.

Tomorrow has us taking in the sights and sounds of downtown Toronto!