Animals-- Not the Kids, the Real Thing!

We've spent portions of each of the last two weekends at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. We are members. And it is so worth the membership cost (which is, incidentally, fully tax-deductible). Living so close to both the World Famous Zoo and the Wild Animal Park make them great places to visit. And because we are members, we never feel guilty about just staying for a while.

As luck would have it, both times we visited, the weather was gorgeous. So here are some photos:

First is the white rhino, which is the icon for the Wild Animal Park.

This particular rhinocerous is famous for producing a ridiculous amout of offspring-- enough to help keep the species going. This isn't him, actually-- he died. But this is a statue in his memory.

The first time we went to the Park, we took the tram/train ride to see all the animals in their Asia and Africa enclosures. There were several new babies to see:

Here is one of the baby elephants.

And that one is of the baby rhinocerous. Of course I think they are both adorable. Then again, I don't clean the enclosures!

On our next visit, Casey was enamored with the birds-- the ducks, the flamingoes. He was just crazy about the birds!

Over at South Cackalackin, my good friend recently published a post about our ecological footprints. Jason likes to give Danielle a hard time-- you see, she worked for many years at the Bronx Zoo in New York, and she has a real love of animals and a real knack for teaching about them. But somehow, every time we get together with Danielle, Jason and Dani get into some conversation about benobo monkeys (not even sure I'm spelling that right!). Anyway, these next two photos are for Danielle-- I do know that gorillas are not the same as monkeys (the gorilla doesn't have a tail, for instance). But our visit made me think of her.

So those are the animal photos. I personally prefer the people photos, like these: