The Zoo!

We renewed our membership at the Honolulu Zoo yesterday for $35. We only go to the Honolulu Zoo once a year, but *they are reciprocal with Woodland Park and Point Defiance,* and buying memberships at those zoos (which are not reciprocal with one another) would have cost us $169 even with the internet deals. This is becoming a tradition. It might, however, become traditional to get the membership and LEAVE. That zoo is goddamned HOT. And -great- it was the day we forgot to bring water. Go figure. The kids were miserable, my dad and I were miserable, the animals were miserable...yeah. Toddlerness had a little bit too much "animal encounter" at the kiddie zoo. This goat head-butted her:

And she stuck her fingers in with the chickens and got bit:

And the cow had better be about to calf, because she was at least as surly as any 10th-month woman:

Her Royal Toddlerness is not about to be enthusiastic about farm life after this.

We did manage to have a little bit of interestingness and fun. Particularly in our first 15 minutes or so, when the elephants and monkeys were still enough to distract us from our misery.





The last time we were at the zoo, poor Rusty the orangutan was in a very old-style cell so small that he could stretch out his arms and touch both sides. Not entirely the fault of the zoo - they'd aquired him from a "collector" who wasn't exactly taking great care of him and had tried and failed a few times to get him transferred to a better equiped facility - he'd still spent years at that point in that cramped pen. This time we got there to find this wonderful change:


By the time we were most of the way through the zoo the kidlets and the adult,um,lets were miserable. A break in the shade:



Gah, still too friggin hot.

We took refuge in the movie theater in the afternoon. I took the big two to see Harry Potter (not as scary as Goblet of Fire, it just barely made the let-kids-see-it screening Fran did a few days ago). Enjoyed both the movie and visiting a familiar teenaged haunt.