The bear necessities (Ba-dum *tish)

Well, I created this posting a few weeks ago when Lyzz and I went to the Woodland Park Zoo with some of her siblings and then forgot to finish since we hadn't loaded up the pictures yet. All that has been rectified.

We started our day fairly early and met up at Michelle's house in Mt. Vernon. Everyone traveled caravan style down to the zoo and we managed to not get totally lost in Seattle. Lyzz's oldest brother, Chris, his wife, Karima, and their little girl, Zaira were in town and basically the reason for the family zoo trip. Michelle and her boys, and Bonnie with her little girl rounded out the group. All the little kids running around just reminded me of what Lyzz and I get to look forward to in December. Tanner, Zaira, and Foster
Really, this post is mostly and excuse to put up a few pictures of the cool critters we saw that day.
Komodo Dragons, while neat, are hardly fire-breathers. Disappointing.
Meerkats are one of the newest additions to the Woodland Park Zoo. I hope there was one named Timon.


Here's an otter looking about as majestic as an otter is capable of looking.



The bird enclosure of course has a "feed the birds" option available. The birds are definitely not shy at this point.



Orangutans are allegedly a distant relative of mine (thanks, Dad). A joke that Lyzz enjoys perpetuating.



This is Simon the siamang. I know his name because I spent every week at the zoo watching him for several hours for a 300 level Behavioral Psychology class. He's slightly blind in one eye thanks to a cataract, and he can shriek like a demon.

The trip was a ton of fun. Afterwards, we headed to Dick's Drive-in and had some ridiculously cheap burgers (good though) and hung out for a little while with the rest of the Ashinhurst family. All in all, it was a neat trip. I've always enjoyed the zoo in the past, ever since I was a kid running around the San Francisco zoo, and now Lyzz and I are contemplating a membership. We'll see.