PsychoPhil

(otherwise known as ‘the part that interfered with baseball and beer’) was spent at the Philadelphia Zoo and Brandywine Creek State Park in Delaware.

The kids (all 6 of ‘em, we were visiting the sister-in-law for the weekend) really enjoyed the zoo. The big hits were the Gorillas and the Otters. The Otters are behind huge panes off glass and would ‘play’ with the kids by swimming along with them as they ran back and forth in front of the glass.Eventually the kids tried to trick the otters by suddenly switching directions. This didn’t last long as the Otters proved to be far more skilled in avoiding collisions with sudden changes of direction that the kids. The Gorillas were very active and consisted of a about three females and a very large silverback who got pissed off while he was trying to eat and the females kept messing with him (ain’t that always the case?).

There’s also a big deal being made about the new ‘Big Cats Falls’ exhibit at the Philadelphia Zoo which has been open approximately two weeks. We arrived right before the park opened and the crowd was very large. We decided to employ or Disney strategy and went the opposite way… away from Big Cats and towards the back of the zoo first. We managed to avoid the crowds that way most of the day. We checkout out Big Cats Falls at the end of our trip and where honestly quite disappointed. The exhibit is relatively small, pathways where cramped (and not just because of the crowds) and most importantly, there were no Big Cats to be seen (except for one sleeping lion). These were the only exhibits in the zoo where the animals were not active. I paraphrased a quote from Jurassic Park ‘eventually you do plan on having Big Cats in Big Cats Falls don’t you?’ which earned me a dirty look from one of the keepers.

Pictures of these trips have been placed in the gallery but have been put in the restricted friend/family section because of the frikken weirdos out there who keep linking to my gallery pics.