St. Louis Zoo

On Friday, September 17th, my homeschool co-op donned their matching, * ultra fashionable *, bright orange T-shirts and spent the day at the St. Louis Zoo. It was a beautiful, clear sunny day; the type of weather people wish it could stay all year long. We had a total of seven out of our nine families join us for a total of 28 members in all!
Our first stop was to the Stingray exhibit. Visitors were able to get in free for the first hour.

 Then we all met up on the train and traveled through tunnels, over a bridge, past a waterfall...

...until we reached the monkey exibits. I think we would all agree that the most disgusting part of our trip was when one chimp persistently cleaned the back sore of another. First he used his mouth, but apparently it wasn't effective enough because he followed up with a piece of straw. Our group watched in horror as he repeatedly used the "tool" to dig the open sore and then licked the straw clean. I thought my dear friend, Angie, was going to throw up.

Chimpanzees

Somewhere around the Red Panda exhibit,

Red Panda

our group split up and we didn't see each other again until The Children's Zoo at the end of our trip, but my kids and I had a blast with the other half of our group.

The kids couldn't pass up the opportunity to climb all over a life-sized gorilla statue....















Lauren couldn't fit on his back...

Cute-as-can-be ---Lauren

We took a stroll through the Bird Exhibit in Peabody Hall and saw many interesting and beautiful creatures there...

Horn-billed Bird

Love Birds

After lunch, we took a walk through the Red Rock area and saw tigers, a lion, zebras, camels, and giraffes including a newborn giraffe born just this week!

Richard, Emma, and Belle

Juliette, Angie, and Lauren

A couple trips around the Carousel and we were all ready for an afternoon nap.

Abigail, Melissa, and Maggie

A quick look at the Penguin Exhibit...                     

Rockhopper Penguins

We ended our trip with a long train ride so Olivia could sleep, and spent our remaining minutes at "The Children's Zoo" where we played with guinea pigs, observed meerkats, 

climbed on a giant rope spider web, crawled through tunnels, and got out all sorts of remaining energy.

The perfect ending to a perfect day...

Emma

Belle