A trip to the zoo

Today I took the girls to the Gulf Coast Zoo.

We love this zoo in particular because everything is at the girls' eye level.  They can just peek through the fences and see all the incredible animals up close.

Like this porcupine.

And the baboons.  

We saw these monkeys frolicking.  I'm not exactly what kind they are but they were quite frisky.

We fed deer.  Grace named this one Bambi.

And we tried to feed the numerous rabbits running around.

We saw the tigers.  This one was twitching his tail as he watched my girls as they walked along the path.  Then all of a sudden he pounced towards Faith and she yelled, "Ah!  It stared me!" (Ah!  It scared me!)  and ran towards me saying, "Hole me, hole me!"  (Hold me, hold me!)  I was just thankful for the fence.  That tiger moved incredibly fast.

Then we watched as this peacock strutted his stuff across the sidewalk.

Next, the girls wanted to ride the merry-go-round.

And they didn't want to get off after their ride was over.

Until they saw that peacock start shaking his tail feathers!  Then Grace and Faith hopped down and ran over to him.  Faith was utterly delighted as she yelled, "Burd!  Burd!" (Bird!  Bird!) and he didn't fly away.

Grace prounouced, "Momma, I don't want to see his hiney.  I want to see his rainbow again!"  How sweet.

And after a moment or so, he turned around.

He shook his tail feathers for over 10 minutes trying to impress this lady but she just wasn't interested.  She was quite lovely, though.  I have to admit she's much more striking than the other brown birds we saw around.